/O  .^3.^2 


LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,     N.    J. 


Presented  by 


Division 


Section 


(y-\ 


"A  Way  That  Seemeth  Right." 

Proverbs  xvi.,  25. 


An   Examination   of 

"  Christian   Science." 


7 

H.  MARTYN  HART,  D.D. 

Moderator  and  Medallist  in  Experimental  and  Natural  Science,  Trinity 

College,  Dublin.    Author  of  "A  Manual  of  Chemistry," etc.,  and 

Dean  of  St.  John's  Cathedral,  Denver,  Colorado. 


NEW  YORK : 

JAMES  POTT  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

FOURTH  AVENUE  AND  TWENTY-SECOND  STREET. 

J  897. 


Copyright  1897 

BY 

J.    W.    HART 


PREFACE. 


In  the  work  of  my  ministry  I  have  found  so  many 
good  people  distressed  by  the  specious  seduction  of 
this  novel  cult,  "  Christian  Science; "  so  many  families 
divided  by  it;  so  many  dying  persons  sorely  hindered 
by  it;  so  many  professing  to  have  found  peace  through 
it ;  so  many  charlatans  robbing  the  sick  of  their 
slender  income  by  means  of  it,  and  so  often  have  I 
been  appealed  to  for  advice  and  explanation  con- 
cerning it;  that  I  have,  as  a  shepherd  of  the  sheep, 
attempted  to  set  forth  in  this  book  the  unscientific 
nature  of  its  pretensions,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
point  out  the  natural  explanation  of  its  cures. 

I  pray  God  that,  in  His  Mercy,  He  may  be  pleased 
so  to  bless  this  endeavor,  that  it  may  prove  to  those 
who  are  '  weak  in  the  faith '  a  '  savour  of  life  unto 
life '  and  an  edification  unto  the  Body  of  Christ. 

H.  MARTYN  HART. 

The  Deanery, 
Denver,  January,  1897. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER     I. 

ON    HEALIKG. 

Miraculous  Cures.  Freedom  from  Sickness.  The  Power  of  the 
Devil.  S.  Paul's  Infirmity  of  the  Flesh.  The  Uses  of  Sick- 
ness. King  Hezekiah's  Rebellion  against  the  Word  of  the 
Lord,  and  its  Results.     The  Efficacy  of  Prayer. 

CHAPTER     II. 

ON     HEALING. 

Lourdes.  The  Power  of  the  Mind.  Francis  Schlatter  and  his 
Cures.     A  Peculiar  Case. 

CHAPTER     III. 

MIND      AND      MATTER. 

Control  of  the  Mind  over  the  Body.  Charming  away  Warts. 
Lord  Bacon.  The  King's  Evil.  The  Stigmata.  Hypnotism. 
Instances  of  Hypnotism.  A  Miraculous  Cure  in  Moscow. 
Influence  of  Personality.  Cataract.  Microbes.  The  Peculiar 
People.  A  Wonderful  Cure  Investigated.  ''Christian  Science" 
Claims  and  Deeds. 

CHAPTER    IV. 

"christian     science"      HEALING. 

The  Subjective  Mind.  Instances  of  Its  Working.  Two  Classes  of 
Ailments.  Microbic  Diseases.  Nervous  Derangements.  Absent 
Treatment.  Effect  of  Sympathy.  Communication  between 
Minds.     Mind  Reading. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE     DOCTRINE     OF      "CHRISTIAN      SCIENCE." 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  Way  of  Salvation.  Statement 
of  "Christian  Science." 

CHAPTER    VI. 

MAN. 

Mrs.  Eddy's  Meaning.  Mortals  and  Mortal  Minds  the  Creation 
of  the  Wicked  One.  Good  and  Evil.  The  Senses.  Accurate 
Observation.  Wickedness  of  Man.  The  Incarnation.  The 
Divine  Life, 

CHAPTER    Vll. 

THE      HOLY      GHOST. 

The  Ruler  of  this  Dispensation.  The  Holy  Ghost  in  the  Bible  : 
in  Mrs.  Eddy's  book. 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

SPIRIT. 

Value  of  Terms.  A  Definition  of  Adam.  Mrs.  Eddy  on  Spirit. 
A  False  Syllogism.  God  is  not  all.  Life  and  Spirit.  Sub- 
stance. The  Substance  of  the  Body.  The  Resurrection. 
Body  of  Our  Lord.  Ether.  The  Vortex  Theory.  Ether  and 
Matter. 

CHAPTER    IX. 

FORGIVENESS      OF      SIN. 

The  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  Witnesses.  The  Christ  Life.  "  Christian 
Science"  and  the  Removal  of  Sin.  The  Divine  Nature.  The 
Teaching  of  "Christian  Science"  and  the  Gospel  Contrasted. 

CHAPTER    X. 

CONCLUSION. 

The  Value  of  "Christian  Science."  The  Truth  in  "Christian 
Science."  The  Practice  of  "Christian  Science"  Healing. 
Hypnotism  and  Therapeutics. 


CHAPTER   I. 

ON    HEALING. 


IN  February  of  this  year,  1896,  "The  Christian 
Scientists"  of  New  York  opened  a  building 
which  they  had  purchased  for  $75>ooo-  This  was  the 
occasion  of  a  long  article  by  one  of  their  number  in 
"  The  New  York  Tribune  "  descriptive  of  the  prog- 
ress of  the  movement.  The  article  said  that  already 
the  sect  had  three  hundred  churches  in  the  United 
States,  and  daily  was  increasing  its  number  of  adher- 
ents; that  the  particular  congregation  in  New  York 
was  composed  of  eight  hundred  persons,  all  of  whom 
had  been  cured  of  diseases  more  or  less  severe  ;  and 
the  writer  would  point  us  to  the  facts  of  these  and 
similar  cures  as  the  corroboration  of  the  theory  upon 
which  the  "  Science "  is  based.  This  theory  in  its 
present  statement  is  due  to  a  lady  who  says  it  was 
revealed  to  her  in  1865,  Mrs.  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy. 
She  stated  the  theory  in  her  book,  "Science  and 
Health,  with  Key  to  the  Scriptures,"  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1875,  and  has  gone  through  more  than  one 
hundred  editions. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  so  successful  an 
authoress  should  have  many  imitators.  To-day  there 
are  scores  of  books  more  or  less  diverging  from  the 
first  opinions  of  Mrs.  Eddy,  and  scores  of  teachers 


2  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

propagating  all  sorts  of  phases  of  "  The  Science  of 
Spirit."  Inasmuch  as  this  professedly  new  revelation 
points  to  its  works  of  healing  as  the  proofs  of  its 
truth,  it  will  be  necessary  to  examine  the  question  of 
healing  generally,  if  possible  to  discover  if  its  effi- 
cacy lies  in  any  special  theories,  or  in  some  principle 
inherent  in  human  nature. 

We  may  at  once  divide  the  cures  with  which  the 
world  is  familiar  into  two  classes — those  which  are 
miraculous  and  those  which  are  natural.  By 
"  miraculous  "  is  meant  that  the  cure  was  due  to  the 
interposition  of  a  higher  will,  or  by  the  employ- 
ment of  powers  which  exist,  though  generally 
latent,  in  human  beings,  doing  that  which  is  not 
done  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature.  We  often 
find  it  asserted  that  our  Lord  did  his  "mighty 
works"  by  those  powers  which  it  was  intended 
humanity  should  possess,  whereby  the  command  of 
God  should  be  carried  out,  and  we  should  "  subdue 
the  earth.  '  With  the  fall  of  man  the  sceptre  of  this 
power  fell  from  our  grasp.  Occasionally,  here  and 
there,  a  man  seemed  to  have  recovered  something  of 
it,  and  our  Lord  re-possessed  it  in  its  fullness,  and 
thereby  worked  his  miracles.  No  doubt  there  is 
some  truth  in  this;  but  He  Himself  declared  that  the 
Father  had  given  Him  works  to  do.  "The  Father 
that  dwelleth  in  Me,  He  doeth  the  works" — John 
xiv.,  lo.  This  is  a  plain  statement  that  certain 
miracles,  which  He  was  then  referring  to,  were  done 
by  the  higher  will  interfering  with  the  ordinary 
course  of  nature,  and  this  is  what  we  call  a  miracle. 
These  works  are  always  termed  in  the  Greek  "signs." 
Signs  of  what  ?     Signs  that   the  doer  of   them  was 


ON    HEALING.  3 

authorized  by  a  power  superior  to  the  ordinary- 
course  of  nature.  That  these  signs  served  their  pur- 
pose Nicodemus  is  a  witness.  "  No  man,"  said  he, 
*^can  do  the  miracles  (signs)  Thou  doest  except  God 
be  with  him."  Our  Lord  Himself  appealed  to  his 
works  in  proof  of  the  authority  of  his  teaching: 
"  Believe  me  for  the  very  works'  sake" — John  xiv.,  ii. 
He  endowed  his  Apostles,  in  the  first  instance,  with 
the  same  capability  as  He  Himself  possessed.  As  the 
"Christian  Scientists"  have  taken  the  words  of  his 
commission  as  the  motto  around  their  seal,  "  Heal 
the  Sick,  Raise  the  Dead,  Cleanse  the  Lepers,  Cast 
out  Demons,"  it  is  advisable  to  examine  more  closely 
this  authority.  It  occurs  in  the  charge  given  by  our 
Lord  to  the  Twelve  Apostles,  narrated  in  Matt,  x.,  6, 
etc.  He  is  sending  them  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the 
house  of  Israel.  He  forbids  them  to  go  into  the  way 
of  the  Gentiles;  in  order  that  attention  might  be 
gained  for  their  message  and  their  word  be  delivered 
with  authority,  He  endues  them  with  power  "  to 
heal  the  sick,  cleanse  the  lepers,  raise  the  dead,  cast 
out  demons."  It  is  clear  that  this  power  was  a 
special  gift  for  a  special  purpose,  made  to  special 
men  ;  and  unless  it  is  asserted  that  the  Lord  in 
this  "  charge  "  to  his  chosen  twelve  intended  to  address 
through  them  all  his  followers  of  the  centuries  to 
come — an  assertion  no  one  would  make — it  cannot 
be  maintained  that  we  ordinary  Christians  can  draw 
from  these  words  any  authority  whatever  to  "heal 
the  sick." 

The  only  other  reference  in  the  Gospels  to  this 
power  is  in  the  concluding  paragraph  of  S.  Mark's 
Gospel,     These    would    appear   to    be   the  very  last 


4  "A    WAY    THAT   SEEMETH  RIGHT." 

words  our  Lord  uttered  just  before  his  ascension. 
He  is  speaking  again  to  his  Apostles,  and  He  says  : 
"  Go  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  Gospel  to  the 
whole  creation.  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized 
shall  be  saved;  but  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  con- 
demned. And  these  signs  shall  follow  (accompany) 
them  that  believe.  In  my  name  they  shall  cast  out 
devils  ;  they  shall  speak  with  new  tongues  ;  they  shall 
take  up  serpents  ;  and  if  they  drink  any  deadly  thing 
it  shall  in  nowise  hurt  them  ;  they  shall  lay  hands  on 
the  sick,  and  they  shall  recover." 

The  unbiased  reader  will  at  once  conclude  that 
our  Lord  in  this  statement  did  not  in  any  sense 
declare  that  it  was  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  his 
followers  to  be  free  from  sickness,  or  that  it  was  one 
of  their  duties  in  his  name  to  "heal  the  sick." 
These  powers  are  still  spoken  of  as  extraordinary  ; 
they  are  still  termed  "  signs ;"  they  stood  as  wit- 
nesses to  declare  the  Divine  nature  of  the  message  of 
the  Gospel ;  they  were  "  to  accompany  those  that 
believed,"  in  order  to  convince  the  world  that  salva- 
tion had  come.  Before  the  canon  of  Scripture  closed, 
these  signs  were  exhibited  again  and  again.  We 
have  no  authorized  record  of  any  of  the  believers 
drinking  without  harm  a  poisoned  cup — a  common 
enough  mode  of  murder  in  those  days — but  a  legend 
relates  how  the  life  of  S.  John  was  thus  attempted 
and  how  he  escaped.  S.  Paul  at  Melita  did  shake  off 
the  viper,  which  had  fastened  on  his  hand,  into  the 
fire  and  took  no  harm,  and  what  effect  the  "  sign  " 
had  on  the  islanders  S.  Luke  tells  us.  And  if  anyone 
still  needs  convincing  that  these  powers  were  special 
gifts,  not  for  the  benefit  of  believers  themselves,  but 


ON    HEALING.  5 

for  the  quicker  spreading  of  the  Gospel  they  were 
charged  to  propagate,  it  is  conclusively  stated  by 
S.  Paul  in  I.  Cor.  xiv.,  22.  Referring  to  the  speaking 
with  new  tongues,  he  writes:  "  Tongues  are  for  a  sign 
not  to  them  that  believe,  but  to  them  that  believe 
not."  That  is,  the  gift  was  intended  to  attract  the 
outside  world,  and  give  reason,  to  those  who  listened, 
to  credit  that  the  Gospel  preached  was  not  "  of  men, 
but  of  God."  It  was,  in  fact,  the  very  accomplish- 
ment of  what  the  Lord  had  promised,  and  what  S. 
Mark  himself  thirty  years  afterward,  with  the  events 
before  him,  stated  in  the  final  verse  of  his  narrative  : 
*'  And  they  went  forth  and  preached  every v/here,  the 
Lord  working  with  them  and  ratifying  the  Word  by 
means  of  accompanying  signs."     Mark  xvi.,  20. 

That  it  was  never  intended  that  sickness  should  be 
banished  from  our  lives,  while  in  this  state  of  proba- 
tion, but  should  be  used,  as  all  the  other  disabilities 
of  our  present  state,  for  purposes  of  discipline  and 
means  by  which  we  might  forge  our  own  characters, 
is  very  evident  from  the  teachings  of  the  Word  of 
God. 

We  are  told,  and  observation  amply  corroborates 
the  assertion,  that  the  ruler  of  this  world  is  that  evil 
potentate,  that  adversary  of  our  souls,  the  Devil. 
Our  Blessed  Lord  called  him  "  The  Prince  of  this 
World."  The  temptations  which  waylaid  the  path  of 
the  Lord  Himself  are  always  ascribed  to  his  malevo- 
lence. At  the  entrance  of  his  public  ministry  He  is 
led  into  the  wilderness  to  be  tempted  of  the  Devil. 
Matt,  iv.,  I.  He  is  assaulted  by  temptations  which 
were  indicative  of  all  "  the  contradictions  of  sin- 
ners against  Himself."     In  the   natural   commisera- 


6  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

tion  of  the  chief  Apostle,  when  the  Lord  revealed  to 
them  how  soon  He  must  suffer,  He  heard  the  voice 
of  the  Arch-Tempter,  and  said  to  Peter:  "Get  thee 
behind  me,  Satan,  for  thou  savourest  not  the  things 
that  be  of  God,  but  of  men."  And  when  his  be- 
trayer, with  the  wine  of  the  first  sacrament  upon  his 
lips,  went  out  into  the  night,  to  make  his  proposal  to 
the  Sanhedrim,  the  Evangelist  records  :  "Now  Satan 
having  put  into  the  heart  of  Judas  Iscariot  to  betray 
him,  he  went  out  " — a  corroboration  of  our  Lord's  own 
words,  that  although  He  had  chosen  the  twelve,  one 
of  them  was  a  devil.  All  through  his  career  He 
looked  upon  the  opposition  He  met  with  and  the 
sorrows  which  oppressed  people  as  due  to  "  the  envy 
of  the  devil."     Wisdom  ii.,  24. 

To  the  head  and  front  of  the  opposition,  which 
finally  compassed  his  death.  He  said:  "Ye  are  of 
your  father,  the  devil."  In  those  days  spirits  of  evil 
gained  access  to  men's  souls,  and  disputed  with  the 
man  himself  the  governance  of  himself.  These  He 
"cast  out,"  "  suffering  them  not  to  speak,  for  they 
knew  him."  He  even  ascribed  to  their  malevolence 
those  infirmities  of  the  body  which  elicited  his  pity. 
He  said  of  the  woman,  the  curvature  of  whose  spine 
was  such  that  she  "  could  in  nowise  straighten  herself," 
that  it  was  Satan  who  had  "  bound  her,  lo!  these 
eighteen  years."  Luke  xiii.,  16.  Death  itself  He 
ascribed  to  satanic  power.  "  I  will  forewarn  you 
whom  ye  shall  fear.  Fear  him  who,  after  he  hath 
killed  the  body,  hath  power  to  cast  into  hell  :  yea,  I 
say  unto  you,  fear  him."     Luke  xii.,  5. 

This  terrible  view  of  the  condition  of  our  life 
might   be   conjectured   from   the   fact   that  our  Lord 


ON   HEALING.  7 

healed  diseases  and  raised  the  dead.  Because,  if  the 
sick  were  afflicted  according  to  the  will  of  God,  and 
if  it  was  the  direct  action  of  the  will  of  God  that 
death  should  come,  how  could  our  Lord  have  re- 
moved the  sickness  or  recalled  the  dead  ?  He  was 
the  only  man  ever  on  earth  who  never  ran  counter  to 
the  will  of  God,  and  in  that  He  did  deliver  the  sick 
and  the  dead  it  is  a  proof  that  they  were  not  smitten 
according  to  the  will  of  God.  It  is,  of  course,  true 
that  no  sparrow  can  fall  to  the  ground  without  His 
high  behest,  but  He  allows  the  power  of  evil  to  act 
within  certain  limits,  that  we  may  have  that  very  dis- 
cipline by  which  and  through  which  we  gain  our 
liberty. 

A  pertinent  illustration  of  the  relationship  which 
the  Almighty  Father  is  pleased  to  maintain  with  the 
Prince  of  Evil  is  given  to  us  in  the  matter  of  that 
"infirmity  of  the  flesh"  which  S.  Paul  describes  as 
"a  messenger  of  Satan,  sent  to  buffet  him."  It  was 
so  poignant  an  affliction  that  the  Apostle  does  not 
style  it  "a  thorn  in  the  flesh,"  but  "a  stake  in  the 
flesh."  The  iron  entered  into  his  soul,  and  to  all 
appearance  woefully  restrained  his  usefulness. 

Now,  S.  Paul  had  in  a  pre-eminent  degree  the  gift  of 
healing.  So  full  was  he  of  "  virtue,"  that  handkerchiefs 
and  aprons  which  had  touched  his  body  conveyed  the 
healing  property  to  the  sick  and  made  them  well — 
Acts  xix.,  II.  But  the  great  Apostle  had  a  serious  view 
of  the  use  of  sickness,  and  so  reverently  did  he  regard 
it  that  he  declined  to  restore  his  damaged  eyesight — 
for  this,  no  doubt,  was  his  infirmity — himself.  He 
therefore  tells  his  Corinthian  converts,  that  he  be- 
sought the  Lord   thrice — H.  Cor.  xii.,  7-10 — to  heal 


8  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

his  sickness,  but  the  Divine  assurance  was,  that  it  was 
better  for  him  to  bear  its  burden  ;  that  grace  was 
vouchsafed  him  to  carry  that  cross.  "  My  grace  is 
sufficient  for  thee,"  was  the  reply.  Now,  in  this  case,  it 
is  unequivocally  stated  that  his  diseased  eyes  were 
due  to  Satanic  power,  that  this  was  permitted  by 
the  Lord,  who  could  have  removed  the  infirmity,  in 
view  of  certain  contingencies  which  might  happen, 
and  which  would  be  sadly  detrimental  to  S.  Paul 
himself.  Some  of  these  he  himself  perceived.  He 
tells  us  that  this  affliction  was  allowed  to  keep  him 
humble,  lest  he  "should  be  exalted  above  measure" 
because  of  "  the  abundance  of  the  revelations  "  which 
had  been  vouchsafed  to  him.  Lest  that  pride,  which 
haunts  us  like  our  shadow,  should  arise  within  him 
and  debase  his  character,  it  was  necessary,  even  for 
him,  that  his  weakness  and  dependence  should  be 
continually  forced  upon  him.  Looking  at  the  cir- 
cumstances from  our  more  distant  point  of  view,  we 
can  see  many  more  advantages  which  accrued  from 
his  sickness.  The  Galatian  Church  never  would  have 
been  founded,  Gal.  iv.,  13;  we  never  should  have 
had  the  Epistle  to  that  Church;  the  intimacy  between 
S.  Paul  and  S.  Luke  would  never  have  existed;  and 
probably,  therefore,  we  owe  to  the  Apostle's  sickness 
the  Gospel  of  S.  Luke  and  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles; 
and  who  shall  say  that  the  profundity  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans,  the  depth  and  energy  of  the  Apostle's 
thought,  are  not  to  be  ascribed  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  often  obliged  to  sit  in  the  dark,  and  being  ever, 
more  or  less,  denied  the  wide  sight  of  the  outer 
world,  was  compelled  to  turn  the  eye  of  his  mind  in 
introspective  view;  and  so  learned  to  commune  with 


ON   HEALING.  9 

himself.  It  was  good  for  S.  Paul,  as  it  was  for 
David,  that  he  was  afflicted. 

Before  leaving  the  pages  of  the  Book  of  Revelation 
and  examining  the  power  of  healing  as  illustrated  in 
secular  history,  we  must  refer  to  an  example  of  the 
fact  that  it  is  possible  for  the  determined  human  will 
to  gain  its  desire,  even  although  the  answer  to  the 
prayer  has  not  the  Divine  approval. 

It  is  quite  possible,  even  probable,  that  S.  Paul 
could  have  healed  himself,  without  applying  to  the 
Divine  Counsellor.  S.  James  leads  us  to  conclude 
that  the  famine  in  Israel  and  the  demonstration  on 
Mount  Carmel  were  the  result  of  the  stalwart  faith 
of  Elijah,  "  a  man  of  like  passions  as  we  are."  Not 
only  did  no  good  result  come  from  his  bringing  force 
to  bear  upon  the  multitude,  but  at  Horeb  God  Him- 
self taught  his  faithful  servant  that  "  it  was  not  by 
might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  spirit,"  saith  the 
Lord,  that  men's  minds  and  hearts  are  influenced. 
The  wind,  the  fire,  the  earthquake,  had  no  effect  on 
the  prophet  himself.  It  was  "the  still  small  voice  " 
of  a  present  personality  which  bowed  him  down;  and 
then  the  command  came  to  him  to  cease  to  attempt 
to  move  masses,  but  to  deal  personally  with  indi- 
viduals— Jehu,  Hazael,  Elisha. 

God  has  been  pleased  to  place  great  honor  on  the 
human  will.  To  it  has  He  committed  the  reception 
of  the  gift  of  eternal  life.  With  such  puissance  has 
He  invested  it,  that  in  its  prerogative  has  He  placed 
the  possession  or  the  non-possession  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  the  Lord  and  Life  Giver.  The  will  of  man 
can  withstand  the  omnipotence  of  Almighty  God. 
Even   the  Lord  of  Lords  cannot  enter  in  and  take 


10  "A   WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

possession  of  a  man's  heart  unless  the  will  of  the 
man  open  unto  Him.  It  is,  therefore,  not  a  thing 
to  be  wondered  at  that,  in  deference  to  the  will  He 
Himself  has  so  honored,  God  does  sometimes  ac- 
quiesce in  that  the  consequences  of  which  we  cannot 
call  good.  In  other  words,  it  is  quite  within  the 
capability  of  men  to  throw  down  the  crosses  He  has 
apportioned  for  them  to  bear,  and  rid  themselves,  by- 
sheer  force  of  will  or  wealth  of  resource,  of  those 
disabilities  which,  if  borne  with  patience,  would  have 
worked  out  for  them  an  eternal  weight  of  glory.  Of 
this  we  have  a  striking  example  given  us  in  the 
history  of  Hezekiah. 

After  a  life  of  faithfulness,  and  brilliant  with 
many  signal  instances  of  the  favor  of  the  Lord,  the 
great  Prophet  Isaiah  is  sent  with  a  message  to  the 
king:  "Set  thine  house  in  order,  for  thou  shalt 
die  and  not  live."  Had  Hezekiah  received  this 
direct  word  from  God  as  a  wonderful  assurance  of 
his  eternal  safety,  had  he  counted  himself  well  rid  of 
this  naughty  v^^orld  and  now  certain  of  passing  into 
Abraham's  bosom,  had  he  received  the  summons  joy- 
fully and  committed  his  soul  unto  God  as  unto  a 
faithful  creator,  he  would  have  departed  in  peace. 
But  instead  of  this,  he  "turned  his  face  to  the  wall 
and  wept  sore,"  and  in  an  agony  prayed  that  God 
would  spare  his  life  and  lengthen  his  days.  While 
still  on  his  way,  "in  the  midst  of  the  city,"  before  he 
had  reached  his  own  house,  Isaiah  is  commanded  to 
return  to  the  palace  to  announce  to  the  king  that  his 
prayer  was  granted,  and  that  God  would  add  fifteen 
years  to  his  life.  Perhaps  we  may  venture  to  think 
that  the  Lord,  who  "  trieth  the  heart,"  knew  that   the 


ON    HEALING.  H 

discipline  of  life  had  done  what  it  could  for  Hezekiah's 
character,  and  that  there  were,  in  the  future,  occasions 
of  temptation  likely  to  arise  under  whose  strain  his 
faith  would  give  way,  so  that  it  would  be  better  for 
him  to  be  "taken  from  the  evil  to  come."  Isaiah, 
Ivii.,  I.  It  is  significant  that  the  trial  of  his  faith,  in 
believing  the  truth  of  the  reprieve,  was  remarkably 
shortened,  ''On  the  third  day  thou  shalt  go  up 
unto  the  house  of  the  Lord;"  and  wonderfully  sup- 
ported by  a  sign  from  heaven,  the  Lord  "  brought 
the  shadow  ten  degrees  backward,  by  which  it  had 
gone    down     in     the     dial    of    Ahaz."       II.    Kings 

XX.,    II. 

In  a  very  short  time  the  weak  place  in  his  character 
was  exposed.     The  writer  of  the  Chronicles  tells  us 
that  "Hezekiah  rendered  not  again  according  to  the 
benefit  done  unto  him,  for  his  heart  was  lifted  up." 
It  was    the    natural  rebound  from    the    ever-present 
thought  of  that  fifteenth  year.     He  said  in  his  thanks- 
giving prayer  for  his  recovery:  "I  shall  go  softly  all 
my    years,    in    the    bitterness    of    my  soul."      Isaiah 
xxxviii.,  15.     He  was  not  the  sort  of  man  who  could 
brace  his  spirit  to  watch  the  sure  approach  of  death, 
not  only  with  calmness,  but  with  triumph.     The  fear 
of  death  had   evidently  great  terror  for  him.     There- 
fore, by  every  device,  he  thrust  from  the  sight  of  his 
mind  the    unwelcome   thought.     This  constant   atti- 
tude  induced   a  sort    of    braggadocio,  a    devil-may- 
care  temperament,  which  is  the  other  alternative  in 
the  face  of  a  great  danger.     Under  such  a  pressure 
a  man   is  either  softened  or  hardened.     That  Heze- 
kiah    might    know    himself    it   was   that    Berodach- 
baladan.  King  of  Babylon,  was  instigated  to  send  to 


12  "A   WAY  THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

Jerusalem  an  embasage  of  princes,  bearing  con- 
gratulations and  a  present.  The  ancient  chronicler 
puts  it  with  graphic  insight:  "Howbeit  in  the  busi- 
ness of  the  ambassadors  of  the  princes  of  Babylon, 
who  sent  unto  him  to  enquire  of  the  wonder  that  was 
done  in  the  land,  God  left  him  to  try  him,  that  He 
might  know  all  that  was  in  his  heart."  II.  Chron- 
icles xxxii.,  31. 

It  is  certainly  a  corroboration  of  this  narrative  that 
Herodotus  found  that  during  the  11,000  years  in 
which  the  Egyptian  priests  said  they  had  kept 
meteorological  records,  they  had  noted  that  the  sun 
had  twice  gone  backwards,  which  agrees  with  the 
two  occasions  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament. 

It  is  clear  that  the  king  was  not  alone  in  his  proud 
attitude,  but  his  court,  and  indeed  the  whole  city,  put 
on  airs.  To  give  their  visitors  the  impression  th-at 
they  were  a  rich  and  mighty  people  they  displayed 
all  their  valuables  and  dilated  on  the  great  sign,  to 
intimate  that  even,  the  very  sun  in  heaven  attended 
to  their  wishes  ;  and  in  consequence  we  read  that 
"  the  wrath  of  the  Lord  came  upon  him  and  upon 
Judah  and  Jerusalem."  Not  only  might  they  have 
escaped  this  calamity  had  their  king  been  safe  in 
Paradise,  but  another  serious  event  would  never 
have  come  to  pass.  In  the  third  year  after  his  re- 
covery his  son  Manasseh  was  born.  The  fifteenth 
year  duly  arrived,  Hezekiah  died,  and  Manasseh,  at 
the  age  of  twelve,  succeeded  him.  He  reigned  fifty- 
five  years.  There  v/as  no  species  of  wickedness  he  did 
not  revel  in.  He  built  altars  to  the  host  of  heaven 
in  the  very  courts  of  the  temple  of  the  Lord.  "He 
made    his    son   pass   through   the   fire  and    observed 


ON   HEALING.  13 

times  and  used  enchantments  and  dealt  with  fam- 
iliar spirits  and  wizards  ;  he  wrought  much  wicked- 
ness in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  to  provoke  Him  to 
anger ;  ...  he  seduced  them  to  do  more  evil 
than  did  the  nations  whom  the  Lord  destroyed 
before  the  children  of  Israel.  Moreover,  Manasseh 
shed  innocent  blood  very  much,  till  he  had  filled 
Jerusalem  from  one  end  to  another."  Can  we 
wonder  that  the  Lord  said  He  would  bring  "  such 
evil  upon  Jerusalem  and  Judah  that  whosoever 
heareth  of  it,  both  his  ears  shall  tingle"?— II.  Kings 
xxi.,  i6.  And  all  this  came  upon  them  in  natural 
sequence,  because  a  man  would  be  rid  of  sickness 
and  would  not  acquiesce  in  the  will  of  the  Lord,  that 
it  was  time  for  him  to  die. 

Every  student  of  Christianity  can  cite  instances 
where  the  purely  human  will  demanded  of  God  the 
recovery  of  some  loved  one,  and  the  prayer,  to 
their  bitter  regret,  was  granted.  Out  of  many 
with    which     I     am     personally    cognizant     I     cite 

one. 

Some  connections  of  my  own,  wealthy  people, 
lived  at  Sydenham,  near  London.  No  children  had 
fallen  to  the  household  for  several  years,  when  a 
baby  boy  was  born,  and  appropriately  christened 
Benjamin.  When  two  years  old  little  Bennie  was 
seized  with  meningitis.  The  most  eminent  of  the 
London  physicians  were  summoned,  consultation 
after  consultation  was  held,  but  it  was  evident,  even 
to  the  non-medical  eye,  that  the  child  must  die,  and 
this  was  the  verdict.  An  eminent  ecclesiastic,  now 
gone  to  his  rest,  told  me  he  was  in  the  room.  He 
saw   the  mother,  a  woman  of  great   piety,   open    the 


14  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

large  Bible  on  the  table,  and  finding  the  Lord's 
promise  in  Mark  xi.,  24,  "What  things  soever  ye 
desire,  when  ye  pray,  believe  that  ye  receive  them, 
and  ye  shall  have  them,"  kneeling  down,  she  placed 
her  finger  on  the  verse,  and,  to  use  his  own  words, 
''The  room  literally  shook  with  the  vigor  of  her 
demand  for  the  life  of  her  boy." 

Her  prayer  was  answered;  the  child  did  not  die. 
But  he  remained  in  the  condition  in  which  the  dis- 
ease had  been  arrested  sixteen  years  !  For  sixteen 
years  he  lay,  a  baby  in  his  cradle,  and  the  intimates 
of  the  household  used  to  go  into  the  nursery  to  see 
"  little  Bennie."  It  was  said  he  recognized  his  mother, 
but  gave  no  other  sign  of  intelligence.  At  the  end 
of  those  long  sixteen  years  the  mother  was  glad  and 
thankful  to  have  him  go  to  the  Father's  home  ! 

It  has  ever  appeared  to  reasonable  people  a  strange 
thing  to  deny  to  the  God  above  us  that  power  which 
we  ourselves  possess.  We  can  arrest  the  processes  of 
nature,  and  by  our  will  interfere  with  what  appear 
universal  laws.  We  walk  upright,  defiant  of  the  law 
of  gravity.  Then  why  should  not  either  God's  will, 
if  so  He  deem  fit,  or  even  man's  will,  if  so  capable, 
avert  in  certain  cases  what  appear  to  be  sure  conse- 
quences ?  After  all,  is  it  not  merely  the  superimposi- 
tion  of  a  higher  and  more  potent  force? 

The  cure  of  sickness  is  lawful  if  the  heart  be  in 
willing  subservience  to  the  mind  of  God.  We  have 
seen  how  dangerous  it  is  to  heal  the  sick  without 
reference  to  Him  who  alone  knows  what  is  in  us  and 
what  lies  before  us.  Few  people  can  doubt  that  the 
power  of  will  to  hold  us  in  health  is  one  of  the  means 
God  has  placed  at  our  disposal  to  enable  us  to  deal 


ON    HEALING.  15 

with  the  difficulties  of  life.  But,  like  all  other 
powers,  it  is  intrusted  to  us  to  use  only  for  his 
service  and  in  his  honor. 

But  to  say  that  man's  mission  is  to  sweep  out  of  his 
path  every  disability,  and  that  he  has  commission 
from  the  Master  to  everywhere  "  heal  the  sick,"  is  a 
dangerous  doctrine,  and  subversive  of  the  very  occa- 
sion of  our  life.  And  its  contradiction  is  positive,  by 
the  failure  in  the  majority  of  cases  where  it  is  at- 
tempted by  those  who  are  so  deluded  as  to  believe  it. 


CHAPTER    II. 

ON     HEALING. 

IT  has  naturally  been  the  desire  of  every  generation 
to  heal  its  sick.  Sickness  is  not  a  pleasant 
experience,  and,  as  it  not  seldom  leads  to  death,  the 
sympathies  of  the  sick  as  well  as  those  of  their  im- 
mediate friends  are  keenly  awakened,  one  and  all, 
from  every  consideration,  are  filled  with  anxiety  to 
see  the  sick  one  cured. 

Nothing  makes  us  realize  the  weakness  of  the 
human  arm  more  than  an  attack  of  sickness.  The 
disease  holds  its  way,  as  a  giant  striding  amongst 
pigmies.  Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that  in  every 
generation  men  have  obeyed  the  worshipping  instinct 
of  our  nature  and  appealed  to  the  unseen  power? 

The  wealth  of  the  temples  of  the  ancient  world  was 
chiefly  from  votive  offerings  of  those  who  believed 
the  god  had  cured  them  or  theirs,  of  some  ill  to  which 
flesh  is  heir.  Evidence  could  be  gleaned  from  every 
classic  writer  of  sacred  places  famed  in  his  time  for 
the  healing  properties  they  possessed. 

Strabo  records  the  marvelous  reputation  gained  in 
his  day  by  a  temple  of  the  Egyptian  god,  Serapis, 
which  was  situate.d  at  Canopus,  and  was  reached 
from  Alexandria  by  canal.  He  says  that  eminent 
persons    from    all    parts   of   the  world    congregated 


ON    HEALING.  17 

there  to  be  healed;  that  so  great  was  the  number  of 
pilgrims  that  the  canal  was  filled  with  boats  going 
and  returning. 

There  never  was  a  shrine  or  holy  well  that  had  not 
tales  to  tell  of,  and  usually  an  assortment  of  crutches 
and  sticks  to  witness  to,  the  cures  performed  by  its 
relic  or  its  holy  water. 

In  our  day  we  have  the  truly  wonderful  sights  at 
Lourdes.  A  peasant  girl  declared  the  Blessed  Virgin 
had  appeared  to  her.  Her  story  was  credited  by 
some,  disbelieved  by  others.  People  went  to  see  the 
girl  and  the  place,  cures  began  to  be  effected,  and 
now  there  is  a  splendid  church  and  its  accompani- 
ments ;  and  every  year  not  only  are  great  pilgrimages 
organized,  but  "  The  White  Train  "  passes  through 
France  and  collects  on  its  way  one  thousand  incur- 
ables, who  are  attended  by  devotees  of  the  highest 
rank.  Out  of  these  one  thousand,  two  hundred  are 
cured.  There  is  no  chicanery  about  this.  A  com- 
mittee of  medical  men  of  all  shades  of  opinions  and 
beliefs  examine  these  cases  before  and  after  the  use 
of  the  water,  and  in  numberless  instances  have  ex- 
pressed themselves  satisfied  of  the  genuineness  of  the 
cure. 

But  does  anybody  believe  that  such  cures  establish 
the  reality  of  the  existence  of  the  gods  of  ancient 
mythology?  Or  the  genuineness  of  the  relics  of  the 
saints  ?  Or  that  the  Blessed  Virgin  really  did  appear 
to  the  French  peasant  girl  ?  Whatever  the  power  of 
the  cure  may  be,  it  is  evident  that  in  these  cases  it 
resided  in  the  subjects  themselves,  and  not  in  the 
object  of  veneration.  It  was  subjective,  and  not 
objective. 


18  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

Before  we  attempt  to  illustrate  the  effect  that  the 
mind  has  over  our  bodies,  we  must  notice  the  case  of 
a  healing  power  which  is  possessed  b}^  some  persons. 
S.  Paul  distinctly  tells  us  that  there  is  "a  gift  of 
healing."  Our  Blessed  Lord  had  it  in  its  fullness. 
'*  The  whole  multitude  sought  to  touch  Him ;  for  there 
went  virtue  out  of  Him  and  healed  them  all  " — Luke 
vii.,  19;  and  when  the  woman  in  the  crowd  touched  the 
hem  of  his  garment,  unknown  to  Him,  He  immediately 
was  cognizant  of  the  craving  touch,  for  He  said:  "I 
perceive  that  virtue  has  gone  out  of  me."  How  far 
the  Lord  and  his  Apostles  were  endued  with  this 
gift,  and  how  far  their  works  were  the  offspring  of 
"  power  from  on  high,"  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But 
there  is  no  doubt  whatever  that,  apart  from  religious 
belief,  or  at  least  independent  of  it,  many  persons 
have  a  force  which  is  strengthening  and  health- 
giving.  There  are  clergymen  of  whom  it  is  said  that 
the  sick  infants  they  baptize  almost  invariably  re- 
cover, and  everyone  knows  of  persons  whose  presence 
in  the  sick-room  is  welcomed,  and  who,  by  a  touch  or 
stroke  of  the  hand,  seem  to  revive  the  invalid.  It  is 
the  habit  to  ascribe  to  imagination,  if  not  to  imposi- 
tion, the  healings  of  men  who  in  every  generation 
have  gained  celebrity  for  the  cures  they  have 
wrought;  therefore  there  is  little  disposition  to  seri- 
ously examine  their  claims. 

Francis  Schlatter  is  a  case  in  point.  In  the  fall  of 
last  year  he  attracted  in  this  city  of  Denver  thou- 
sands of  persons,  who  passed  before  him  for  eight  or 
ten  hours  every  day.  Whatever  may  have  been  his 
own  religious  belief,  he  made  no  exaction  on  the  faith 
of    others,  and  of  some  of   the    cures   he   wrought   it 


ON    HEALING.  19 

must  be  admitted  that  the  curative  power  came  from 
him,  and  was  not  excited  in  the  patient.  Let  three 
cases  which  came  under  my  own  observation  suffice  : 

The  cook  of  one  of  our  oldest  residents,  in  lifting 
a  piano  eight  years  ago,  ruptured  herself.  She 
suffered  many  things  of  many  physicians,  and  was 
not  cured.  Often  she  was  unable  to  work,  and 
although,  of  course,  she  wore  a  truss,  was  frequently 
in  great  pain.  Moreover,  her  eyesight  became  im- 
paired. She  could  not  see  to  thread  a  needle,  and 
could  not  even  sew  by  gaslight.  The  second  day 
Schlatter  was  here  she  was  in  the  long  line  which 
approached  him.  She  is  a  Swede,  and,  after  the 
manner  of  her  countrywomen,  very  taciturn.  She 
never  spoke  to  him,  nor  he  to  her.  She  heard  what 
he  said  to  otners.  He  held  her  hand.  She  said  as 
he  did  so  she  felt  she  was  cured. 

On  returning  home  she  took  off  her  truss.  I  saw 
her  six  weeks  afterward,  and  again  in  six  months 
To  use  her  own  words,  she  said  she  was  '*a  well 
woman."  Moreover,  her  eyes  regained  their  wonted 
strength.  She  remained  apparently  in  perfect  health; 
at  least,  she  did  her  work  without  interruption,  her 
mistress  tells  me,  until  a  little  time  ago  she  left  to 
revisit  her  native  land. 

Schlatter  never  would  receive  any  remuneration, 
although  it  was  said  as  much  as  $500  was  offered  him 
in  one  fee. 

Now,  contrast  this  with  a  parallel  case.  A  lady  in 
my  congregation  is  afflicted  in  the  same  way.  Find- 
ing she  was  not  cured  by  ordinary  treatment,  she 
was  persuaded  to  consult  a  "Christian  Science" 
healer.       This    person,  after    many    treatments,    as- 


30  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

sured  her  she  was  cured — indeed,  that  "  the  pain,  the 
lump,  the  discomfort,  were  all  the  illusions  of 
'mortal  mind,'  and  had  no  real  existence;  she 
might  go  home  and  discard  her  truss."  Which  she 
foolishly  did,  and  was  only  saved  next  day  by  pro- 
longed medical  effort  from  having  to  undergo  the 
operation  for  strangulated  hernia.  She  had  paid  the 
"scientist"  $50. 

Another  precisely  similar  case  occurred  with  an- 
other lady  of  my  congregation.  She  consulted  a 
"healer,"  who  treated  her  every  day  for  six  weeks. 
On  leaving  for  Florida,  the  "Christian  Scientist" 
proposed  to  give  her  "absent  treatments"  at  the 
same  rate  of  charge.  But  when  on  the  train,  at  one 
of  the  "set  times,"  she,  too,  was  on  the  point  of  des- 
perate trouble.  The  movements  consequent  on  travel 
had,  of  course,  brought  down  the  hernia,  and  it 
became  strangulated,  and  it  was  only  "  reduced  "  at 
the  cost  of  great  suffering. 

But  to  return  to  Schlatter,  to  show  that  healings 
are  possible  without  any  dependence  on  any  theory 
whatever.  I  know  a  boy  of  ten,  who  had  hip  disease 
for  more  than  two  years  before  Schlatter  came.  The 
disease  so  increased  that  the  poor  little  fellow  could 
only  lie  on  the  floor  on  his  right  side,  so  propped  by 
pillows  that  he  could  not  turn  over  in  his  sleep.  He 
went  to  the  healer,  who  told  him  that  in  two  months 
it  was  God's  will  that  he  should  be  well,  and  from 
that  time  he  began  rapidly  to  amend.  A  large  lump 
gathered,  but  painlessly.  It  then  broke,  freely  dis- 
charged, and  then  the  place  permanently  healed. 
The  boy  has  abandoned  his  crutches,  and  his  leg, 
though  of  course  deformed,  has  no  sign  of   disease 


ON   HEALING.  21 

about  it;    and  it   is  a  year   since   the  "healer"   was 
here. 

A  third  and  last   case   is  that  of   a  young  man  I 
have  known  ten  years.     His  digestion  was  so  feeble 
that   at    length    even    the    milk    and    bread    he   was 
reduced   to    live    upon,  had    to    be    removed    by  the 
stomach  pump  whenever  he  was  seized  with  a  species 
of  convulsion,  which  he  well  described  as  "  the  blind 
staggers."     His  father  being  the  manager  of  one  of 
our  chief  daily  papers,  and  his   mother  most   active 
in   all  charitable  undertakings,  he  had  every  medical 
attention,  and  in  spite  of  all  endeavors  he  gradually 
neared    his  grave.     I  often   saw  him,  and  he  was  a 
cause    of    great  anxiety  to   us   all.     He  went  to  see 
Schlatter,  and   from  that  hour  he   began   to  amend. 
In   a  few  weeks    he   could  eat  anything;    his  whole 
system  seemed    changed.     So  thankful  was  he  that 
he  became  Schlatter's  attendant,  and  held  the  hand- 
kerchiefs and  cloths  brought  to  be  blessed.     Schlatter 
pressed  them  between  his  hands  for  a  few  minutes, 
and  many  persons  whom  I  have  questioned  declared 
that  when  applied   to   the    body  they  reddened  and 
drew  the  skin  as  a  mustard  plaster  would.     When  I 
first  heard  this  I  derided  the  idea,  or  conceived  it  to 
be    another  illustration  of   the   power  of  mind  over 
body.     But  both   my  young  friend  and    his   mother 
have  many  evidences  to  give,  which   it  is  difficult  to 
gainsay,  as    to    the    singular   effect  which   they  both 
experienced  themselves  and  witnessed  on  the  persons 
of  other  people  when   these  '•  blessed  "   cloths  were 
applied. 

The  general  opinion  of  those  who  were  intimately 
concerned  with  this  singular  man  is  that  five  per  cent. 


22  *'A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

of  those  who  sought  his  aid  were  materially  bene- 
fited. He  himself  ascribed  the  cures  to  faith  in  God, 
which  he  continually  urged.  His  appearance,  very 
spiritual  and  distrait,  greatly  assisted  the  earnest- 
ness of  his  appeal,  and  no  doubt  largely  contributed 
to  the  effect. 

In  the  "  British  and  Foreign  Medical  Review," 
January,  1847,  is  given  a  series  of  cases  communi- 
cated by  a  naval  surgeon  of  long  standing.  This 
illustration  of  the  astonishing  effect  of  mind  over 
body  will  render  credible  the  above  instance  of 
Schlatter's  success  : 

"  A  very  intelligent  officer  had  suffered  for  some 
years  from  violent  attacks  of  cramps  in  the  stomach. 
He  had  tried  almost  all  the  remedies  usually  recom- 
mended for  the  relief  of  this  distressing  affection, 
and  for  a  short  period  prior  to  coming  under  my  care 
the  trisnitrate  of  bismuth  had  been  attended  with  the 
best  results.  The  attacks  came  on  about  once  in 
three  weeks,  or  from  that  to  a  month,  unless  when 
any  unusual  exposure  brought  them  on  more  fre- 
quently. As  the  bismuth  had  been  useful  it,  of 
course,  was  continued;  but  notwithstanding  that  it 
was  increased  to  the  largest  dose  that  its  poisonous 
qualities  would  justify,  it  soon  lost  its  effect.  Seda- 
tives were  again  applied  to  ;  but  the  relief  afforded 
by  these  was  only  partial,  while  their  effect  on  the 
general  system  was  very  prejudicial.  On  one  occa- 
sion, while  greatly  suffering  from  the  effect  of  some 
preparation  of  opium,  given  for  the  relief  of  these 
spasms,  he  was  told  that  on  the  next  attack  he  would 
be  put  under  a  medicine  which  was  generally  believed 
to  be  most  effective,  but  which  was  rarely  used  because 


ON    HEALING.  23 

of  its  dangerous  qualities;  but  that,  notwithstanding 
these,  it  would  be  tried,  provided  he  gave  his  assent. 
This  he  did  willingly.  Accordingly,  on  the  first 
attack  after  this,  a  powder  containing  four  grains  of 
groiuid  biscuit  was  administered  every  seven  minutes, 
while  the  greatest  anxiety  was  expressed  (within  the 
hearing  of  the  patient)  lest  too  much  should  be  given. 
"  The  fourth  dose  caused  an  entire  cessation  of  pain. 
Half-drachm  doses  of  bismuth  had  never  procured 
the  same  relief  in  less  than  three  hours.  For  four 
successive  times  did  the  same  kind  of  attack  recur, 
and  four  times  it  was  met  by  exactly  the  same  remedy 
with  like  success.     After  this  he  joined  another  ship," 


CHAPTER   III. 


MIND    AND    MATTER. 


TURNING  now  to  the  control  the  mind  has  over 
the  body,  we  have  within  our  reach  a  mass  of 
evidence  which  goes  far  to  prove,  that,  thought  of  any 
given  bodily  change  tends  to  the  actual  productiofi  in  the 
body  of  the  change  that  thought  suggests. 

This  statement  need  not  give  us  any  great  surprise, 
if  we  consider  that  the  body  must  be  secreted  by  the 
soul,  if  by  soul  we  mean  the  human  vitality  be- 
queathed to  us  by  our  parents. 

Unless  we  are  prepared  to  admit  that  the  soul 
gathers  to  itself  and  places  in  their  proper  position 
particles  of  matter,  thus  building  for  itself  an  organ- 
ism for  its  own  habitation  and  for  the  transaction  of 
its  business  in  this  material  world,  unless  we  admit 
that  the  soul  thus  constructs  the  body,  how  are  we 
to  account  for  that  family  likeness  which  strangely 
blends  the  characteristics  of  both  father  and  mother? 
The  soul  must  have  a  form,  and  surely  it  is  not 
beyond  our  right  to  presume  that,  when  disem- 
bodied, we  shall  still  retain  our  present  appearance  ? 
We  cannot  admit  that  the  body  gives  form  to  the  soul. 
It  is  evident  that  the  soul  determines  the  form  of  the 
body,  and,  if  so,  then  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  altera- 
tion of  the  soul  intimately  affects  the  body.     That  it 


MIND   AND   MATTER.  25 

does  so  is  beyond  question.  Even  after  the  body  has 
attained  its  full  growth  and  the  appearance  of  the 
face  has  become  fixed,  let  a  change  occur  in  the 
nature  of  the  man — let  him  become  spiritually 
minded,  or  even  let  him  have  his  intelligence  stimu- 
lated, and  everyone  will  mark  his  altered  appear- 
ance.    We  say  he  is  a  changed  man. 

It  is  not  a  mere  alteration  of  muscular  setting  of 
which  the  mind  is  capable.  It  will  cause  actual 
change  in  the  fabric  of  the  body.  A  fright  has  been 
known  to  whiten  the  hair  ;  a  feeling  will  blanch  or 
will  redden  the  face  ;  let  anyone  concentrate  his 
thought  on  the  tip  of  any  of  his  fingers,  and  it  will 
begin  to  tingle,  because  the  blood  is  being  drawn  to 
that  spot.  This  important  fact  was  noted  by  no  less 
a  medical  authority  than  John  Hunter.  He  writes  : 
"  I  am  confident  that  I  can  fix  my  attention  to  any 
part  until  I  have  a  sensation  in  that  part."  Anxiety 
will  take  away  appetite,  which  means  that  those 
juices  essential  to  digestion  are  arrested,  and  the 
stomach,  unprepared  to  receive  food,  intimates  its 
disinclination  for  it.  On  the  other  hand,  a  happy, 
buoyant  spirit  is  at  once  the  cause  and  the  effect  of  a 
good  digestion. 

But  there  is  a  class  of  evidence  which  is  more 
inexplicable.  Who  of  us  has  not  in  childhood 
had  our  warts  charmed  away  ?  The  modus  operandi 
of  the  charmer  was  always  to  make  the  occasion  very 
solemn;  then  the  mind  was  adroitly  drawn  to  the 
obtrusive  wart;  it  was  to  be  rubbed  with  half  an 
onion,  whose  other  moiety  was  to  be  buried  in  the 
churchyard  exactly  one  hour  after  sunset,  or  some 
other  mysterious  treatment  was  prescribed,  and  the*^ 


26  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

with  the  assurance  that  the  wart  would  disappear 
that  day  fortnight,  the  patient  was  dismissed;  but 
the  mind  had  been  riveted  on  that  wart,  and  its 
effect  was  to  banish  the  intruder;  and,  what  is  more 
curious,  no  one  seems  to  have  noticed  the  decay  of 
the  wart,  but  suddenly  it  was  found  gone  ! 

On  this  curious,  but  very  suggestive  experience, 
we  have  a  narrative  by  no  less  a  person  than  my 
Lord  Chancellor  Bacon.  "  I  had  from  childhood," 
he  says,  "  a  wart  upon  one  of  my  fingers;  afterwards, 
when  I  was  about  sixteen  years  old,  being  then  in 
Paris,  there  grew  upon  both  my  hands  a  number  of 
warts,  at  the  least  a  hundred,  in  a  month's  space. 
The  English  Ambassador's  lady,  who  was  a  woman 
far  from  superstitious,  told  me  one  day  she  would 
help  me  away  with  my  warts;  whereupon  she  got  a 
piece  of  lard,  with  the  skin  on,  and  rubbed  the  warts 
all  over  with  the  fat  side,  and  among  the  rest  that 
wart  I  had  had  from  my  childhood;  then  she  nailed  the 
piece  of  lard,  with  the  fat  towards  the  sun,  upon  a 
post  of  her  chamber  window,  which  was  to  the  south. 
The  success  was  that  within  five  weeks'  space  all  the 
warts  went  away,  and  that  wart  I  had  so  long  en- 
dured for  company.  But  at  the  rest  I  did  little 
marvel,  because  they  came  in  a  short  time  and  might 
go  away  in  a  short  time  again;  but  the  going  away  of 
that  which  had  stayed  so  long  doth  yet  stick  with 
me." 

It  is  very  venturesome  to  suggest  to  such  a  man 
that  he  had  forgotten  anything,  but  no  doubt  the 
Ambassador's  lady  told  him  that  as  the  sun  melted 
the  lard  so  would  the  warts  disappear!  The  boy's 
mind  was  by  many  circumstances  fixed  on  the  warts, 


MIND   AND    MATTER.  27 

the  grand  lady,  the  foreign  city,  the  bit  of  lard,  and 
not  improbably  the  evident  association  between 
lard  and  Bacon.  The  "  suggestion  "  worked,  and  the 
warts  vanished  ! 

In  the  time  of  the  Stuarts,  "  touching  for  the  'King's 
Evil'"  was  one  of  the  regular  duties  of  the  king. 
There  must  have  been  numerous  cases  where  the 
scrofula  was  actually  removed,  not  by  the  touch  of 
the  king's  finger,  but  by  the  effect  of  the  powerfully 
directed  mind  to  the  affected  gland. 

There  are  on  record  some  ninety  cases  of  the 
stigmata,  the  marks  of  the  nails  and  the  spear-thrust 
in  our  Lord's  body,  appearing  on  persons  deeply 
religious.  Many  of  these  cases  are  established  be- 
yond question. 

S.  Francis  Assissi,  the  founder  of  the  Franciscan 
Order  of  monks,  was  the  first  in  whom  the  stigmata 
were  said  to  be  visible,  both  before  and  after  his 
death. 

In  the  next  century,  the  fourteenth,  the  rival 
order,  the  Dominicans,  gloried  in  the  exhibition  by 
S.  Catherine  of  Sienna  of  the  same  marks;  but  there 
must  have  been  some  doubts  as  to  the  reality  of  the 
appearances,  for  in  1475  PoP^  Sixtus  IV.  published  a 
bull  ordering  the  erasure  of  the  stigmata  from  all  the 
pictures  of  S.  Catherine.  But,  despite  the  infallibil- 
ity of  the  Pope,  this  may  not  be  taken  as  conclusive 
evidence  that  this  hysterical  girl  of  twenty-three  had 
not  the  stigmata.  The  rivalry  between  the  Francis- 
cans and  Dominicans  was  something  indescribable, 
and  it  is  quite  possible  the  bull  of  the  Pope  did  not 
altogether  turn  on  the  cogency  of  the  evidence. 

If  later  years  had  not  supplied  us  with  unquestion- 


28  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

able  instances  of  marks  on  the  skin  coming  at  the  in- 
stigation of  the  will,  abnormally  directed,  we  might  be 
inclined  to  believe  that  the  origin  of  the  stigmata  in 
every  case  might  be  naturally  accounted  for,  and  not 
seldom  be  traced  to  the  act  of  the  persons  themselves. 
Hysterical  patients  are  singularly  adroit,  and  will 
inflict  wounds  upon  themselves  to  induce  that  sym- 
pathy for  which  they  crave  with  more  desperate 
yearning  than  the  toper  for  his  dram. 

An  hysterical  girl  once  confessed  to  me  that  she 
herself  had  thrust  a  needle  down  to  the  bone  in  her 
arm,  in  order  that  a  doctor,  she  had  leanings  to, 
might  cut  it  out,  and  the  rest  of  us  have  our  sym- 
pathy excited.  This  girl  could  cause  hemorrhages 
when  she  chose,  and  completely  deceived  some  of  our 
best  physicians.  When  she  lost  the  power  she  used 
carmine  dye,  and  was  of  course  discovered. 

The  reader  is  referred  to  the  article  on  "  Stigmatiz- 
ation  "  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  where  is  given 
the  case  of  Louise  Lateau,  a  peasant  girl  in  Hainault, 
upon  whom  the  stigmata  appeared  in  1868.  Her  case 
was  investigated  by  Professor  Lefebvre,  of  Louvain, 
who  was  for  fifteen  years  the  physician  of  two  lunatic 
asylums,  and  therefore  not  likely  to  be  deceived  by  an 
hysterical  girl,  and  he  wrote  an  account  of  the  phe- 
nomenon, which  was  publi^^hed  at    Louvain  in  1870. 

We  have  lately  had  revived  interest  in  hypnotism, 
the  modern  name  for  mesmerism.  Many  surgical 
operations  have  been  performed  on  favorable  sub- 
jects without  pain  when  mesmerized.  This  is  by  no 
means  improbable,  because  it  is  evident  that  by  mes- 
merism the  mind  of  the  subject  is  diverted  from  the 
ordinary  channel  of  its  operations,  and  by  that  curi- 


MIND    AND    MATTER.  29 

ous  control,  at  present  called  "suggestion,"  is  so 
intently  fixed  elsewhere  that  it  gives  no  heed  to 
ordinary  demands  on  its  attention.  That  such  a 
mental  condition  is  perfectly  possible  is  amply 
proved  by  the  well-authenticated  instances  of  sol- 
diers being  wounded  during  the  awful  excitement  of 
a  battle,  and  never  being  conscious  of  the  pain  which 
the  passage  of  the  bullet  must  have  caused,  only  dis- 
covering the  wound  after  the  action. 

This  peculiar  mental  phenomenon  is  the  true 
explanation  of  many  of  the  cures  of  "Christian 
Science."  Mrs.  Eddy,  being  quite  aware  that  mes- 
merism was  a  powerful  rival  to  her  claims,  is  un- 
measured in  her  denunciation  of  it.  Here  is  one,  out 
of  many,  of  her  onslaughts,  that  is  so  palpably  the 
writing  of  a  frightened  woman  that  it  is  impossible 
to  restrain  a  smile  to  see  her  volubly  denounce  and 
yet  at  once  admit  the  potency  of  her  rival  : 

Mesmerism  is  the  right  hand  of  Humbug,  and  is  either 
delusion  or  fraud.  When  first  teaching  mental  science  I  per- 
mitted students  to  manipulate  the  head,  ignorant  that  this  could 
harm  or  hinder  the  spiritual  direction  of  thought.  ...  By 
thorough  examination  I  learned  that  manipulation  hinders, 
instead  of  helps,  mental  healing.  It  establishes  a  mesmeric 
connection  between  patient  and  practitioner,  and  so  gives  the 
latter  more  opportunity  to  influence  the  thoughts  and  actions  of 
the  former  in  whatever  direction  he  may  choose,  and  some- 
times with  error  instead  of  truth Mesmeric  influ- 
ence is  not  confined  to  manipulation,  but  is  employed  variously, 
and  becomes  the  subtle  agent  of  the  worst  crimes  that  mortals 
can  commit.— "  Science  and  Health,"  pp.  i97-4i5,   74th  Edition. 

This  is  a  real  and  dreadful  power  to  reside  in  "  the 
right  hand  of  Humbug!"  This  is  no  "imaginary 
power." 


30  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

But  if  mesmerism  can  produce  an  actual  alteration 
of  the  skin,  it  can  also  cause  material  changes  in 
unseen  organs,  and  put  right  that  which  has  become 
disordered.  ♦ 

In  the  proceedings  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research,  vol.  vii.,  p.  339,  quoted  in  a  late  number  of 
the  "  Popular  Science  Monthly  "  by  Professor  New- 
bold,  there  are  related  several  cases  in  which  medical 
men,  by  means  of  mesmeric  suggestion,  caused  upon 
the  persons  of  their  subjects  marks  and  crosses  to 
appear  and  disappear  at  stated  times.  One  of  them, 
Dr.  Biggs,  mesmerized  his  housemaid,  and  said  to 
her  :  "  Now,  listen  attentively  ;  a  cross  is  going  to 
appear  on  your  right  forearm  and  remain  there  until 
I  tell  it  to  go  away.  Here  is  where  it  is  to  appear." 
He  then  marked  a  cross  with  his  forefinger  on  the 
inner  side  of  her  right  forearm.  "  Have  5^ou  under- 
stood what  I  said  to  you  ?"  The  mesmerized  girl 
replied,  "  Yes."  He  then  awakened  her.  For  the 
next  two  or  three  days  she  seemed  sulky  and  out  of 
sorts,  and  would  now  and  then  rub  her  arm  where 
the  cross  was  to  appear.  She  said  she  did  so  because 
there  was  an  itching,  although  there  was  as  yet  no 
appearance  of  irritation.  He  then  mesmerized  her 
again  and  asked,  "Do  you  recollect  what  I  told  you 
the  other  day  about  the  cross  that  is  to  appear  on 
your  forearm  ?"  "Yes."  "  Will  it  appear  ?"  "Yes." 
"When?"  "In  a  few  days."  "Well,  it  must  come 
out  in  three  days.  Do  you  understand  me  ?"  "Yes." 
By  the  time  appointed  a  dusky  red  cross  made  its 
appearance.  Never  a  word  had  been  said  to  her 
about  the  cross  in  her  waking  moments,  and  she 
kept  it  as  much  as  possible  out  of  sight,  but  the  end 


MIND   AND   MATTER.  31 

of  it  could  be  occasionally  seen  below  her  sleeve.     It 
was  often  examined  by  putting  her  to  sleep.     Seeing 
it  one  day  the  doctor  said,  ''  Why,  Maria,  what  is  the 
matter  with  your   arm?     Have  you  hurt  it?     What 
mark    is    this?     Let  me  see.     Pull  up  your  sleeve." 
She    did    so,    with    a    slightly    sulky,    ashamed    air. 
"Why,    it   looks   like   a   cross.     Where  did   you  get 
this?"     ''I    don't   know,    sir."     "How  long   has  this 
been    on    your    arm?"     "More  than  a    month,  sir." 
"Have   you   felt  anything?"     "  No,  sir ;  only  at  one 
time  I  had  a  great  deal  of  itching  and  burning,  and 
a  few  days  afterwards  this  mark  came  on  my  arm." 
The  cross  continued  many  months  after  she  had  left 
the  doctor's  service,  and  it  only  disappeared  upon  her 
calling  on  her  late  master  to  remove  it,  which  he  did 
by  mesmerizing  her  and  telling  her,  while  asleep,  that 
the  cross  would  disappear  in  a  few  days,  which  it  did. 
This  capability  of  the  mind,  in  the  peculiar  hyp- 
notic state,  of  producing  an  actual  alteration  of  the 
flesh  is  no  doubt  the  explanation  of  the  appearance 
of   the   stigmata.     These    persons,   usually   girls,    of 
the   ninety   cases   recorded   by  Roman  Catholic  au- 
thorities seventy-two  were  females  and  only  eighteen 
males,  became  by  the  contemplation  of  the  crucifix 
mesmerized.     The   one  great  idea  upon  their  minds, 
before  they  went  into  the  hypnotic  condition,  was  the 
wounds  of  the  Crucified  One.     The  seclusion  of  their 
lives;  the  one  topic  of  their  conversation;  their  en- 
vironment, all  contributed  to  direct  and  impress  the 
thought.     The  pardonable  anxiety  to  be  so  honored 
as    "to    bear   in    the    body   the    marks  of    the    Lord 
Jesus,"  not  a  little  stimulated  by  the  notoriety  which 
the   event   would    secure    for   themselves    and    their 


32  "A   WAY  THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

community,  all  tended  to  subscribe  the  conditions 
essential  for  the  effect,  and  so  it  came  to  pass. 

The  modus  operandi  of  the  "  Christian  Scientist" 
healer  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  that  of  the  hyp- 
notist. By  the  silence,  the  motionless  sitting,  the 
subdued  voice,  the  cabalistic  sentences — for  they  are 
senseless,  and  cannot  excite  the  intelligence — the 
mind  is  soothed;  then  the  suggestion  is  given,  and  in 
the  denial  of  disease  the  repeated  assertion  of  par- 
ticular cure  is  pointedly  made  and  impressed;  thus 
directed,  the  mind  exercises  its  power,  all  too  little 
used,  of  stimulating  nerval  action,  and  so  inducing  in 
the  tissues  the  change  which  the  thought  desires. 
This  is  probably  the  explanation  of  these  cures. 

This  widespread  belief  seems  to  be  the  rebound  of 
the  mind  of  humanity  from  that  abject  materialism 
the  first  heralds  of  awakening  science  sought,  half  a 
century  ago,  to  impose  upon  us.  It  is  possible  to 
gain  a  hearing  now,  for  the  effect  of  the  unseen,  and 
to  believe  that  there  are  causes  of  visible  results 
which  lie  beyond  the  pale  of  the  tangible.  Publica- 
tions which  only  a  few  years  ago  would  have  refused 
to  notice  any  account  of  cures  beyond  the  limits  of 
what  they  termed  medical  science,  do  so  no  longer. 

The  "British  Medical  Journal"  of  November  i6, 
1895,  contains  this  account  of  a  cure  beyond  the 
explanation  of  the  profession  : 

"A  'miraculous'  cure  has  recently  occurred  in 
Moscow,  where  it  has  caused  considerable  excite- 
ment. It  is,  perhaps,  a  more  than  usually  interesting 
instance,  and  therefore  deserving  of  the  permanent 
record  given  to  it  by  Professor  Kozhevnikoff.  .  .  . 
The  patient  was  a  lecturer  in  the  Moscow  University. 


MIND   AND   MATTER.  33 

He  had  suffered  from  a  severe  form  of  sycosis  menti, 
(eruption  of  the  hair  follicles  on  the  chin)  since 
June,  1894.  He  had  visited  Vienna,  Berlin,  Buda- 
Pesth,  Kieff,  and  other  places,  seeking  the  best  advice. 
In  April  last  he  returned  to  Moscow.  His  chin  was 
then  covered  with  a  freshly  suppurating  eruption. 
He  now  sought  the  advice  of  a 'wise  woman,' who 
was  an  attendant  at  the  baths,  and  was  in  the  habit 
of  giving  herbs  and  'simples  '  to  her  clients.  In  this 
case  no  such  remedy  was  employed.  He  was  told  to 
meet  the  woman  next  morning  at  five  o'clock  in  the 
Temple  of  the  Saviour,  the  colossal  church  on  the 
Moskva  River,  which  has  been  building  all  the  cen- 
tury and  is  yet  incomplete,  in  memory  of  the  famous 
events  of  1812.  He  came  as  told,  and  while  he  re- 
mained a  passive  onlooker  the  woman  prayed  for 
three  or  four  minutes.  The  same  thing  was  repeated 
that  evening,  and  again  the  following  morning.  But 
in  the  meantime  the  eruption  on  his  face  had  begun 
to  improve;  the  discharge  ceased,  the  swelling  sub- 
sided, and  in  twenty-four  hours  scarcely  a  sign  of  the 
disease  was  left.  Such  are  the  facts  as  given  by  the 
patient  himself,  and  confirmed  by  Professor  Kozhev- 
nikoff." 

Some  other  details  were  added,  showing  that  the 
patient  was  of  an  impressionable,  perhaps  hysterical 
temperament;  that  the  woman  used  a  cabalistic 
prayer,  which  she  would  not  reveal.  The  time,  the 
surroundings  were  all  favorable,  and  the  result  was, 
no  doubt,  due  to  the  power  of  the  mind,  when  pro- 
perly directed,  upon  a  body  in  a  recipient  condition. 

This  "force"  is  far  more  frequently  put  into  use 
than   is  recognized.     Dr.  Carpenter,  in  his  "  Nature 


34  "A    WAY    THAT  SEEMETH  RIGHT." 

and  Man,"  has  this  paragraph:  "Every  medical  man 
of  large  experience  is  well  aware  how  strongly  the 
patient's  undoubting  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  a  par- 
ticular remedy  or  mode  of  treatment  assists  its 
action;  and  when  the  doctor  is  himself  animated  by 
such  a  faith  he  has  the  more  power  of  exciting  it  in 
others.  A  simple  prediction,  without  any  remedial 
measure,  will  sometimes  work  its  own  fulfillment. 
Thus  Sir  James  Paget  tells  of  a  case  in  which  he 
strongly  impressed  upon  a  woman,  having  a  slug- 
gish, non-malignant  tumor  in  the  breast,  that  this 
tumor  would  disperse  within  a  month  or  six  weeks; 
and  so  it  did.  He  perceived  this  patient's  nature  to 
be  one  on  which  the  assurance  would  act  favorably, 
and  no  one  could  more  earnestly  and  effectively 
enforce  it.  On  the  other  hand,  a  fixed  belief  on  the 
part  of  the  patient  that  a  mortal  disease  has  seized 
upon  the  frame,  or  that  a  particular  operation  or 
system  of  treatment  will  prove  unsuccessful,  seems 
in  numerous  instances  to  have  been  the  real  occasion 
of  fatal  result." 

The  mere  presence  of  some  medical  men  has  a  far 
more  curative  effect  than  their  prescriptions,  because 
of  the  impetus  their  strong  personality  gives  to  the 
will  of  the  patient,  which  beneficially  reacts  upon 
that  ever  ready  disposition  of  nature  to  repair  damage 
and  restore  to  their  proper  working  any  disordered 
functions. 

The  cases  thus  far  cited  are  all  of  a  kind  which 
it  is  conceivable  that  nerval  energy  might  control. 
The  rupture  of  the  Swedish  cook  may  have  been 
partially  mended  by  nature,  for  three  membranes 
must  be  torn  before  the  actual  rupture  occurs,  and 


MIND   AND    MATTER.  35 

the  impetus  given  to  her  nervous  force  by  the  expec- 
tation engendered  by  her  contact  with  the  healer 
and  his  surroundings  may  have  greatly  strengthened 
and  accelerated  the  healing  process. 

The  recovery  of  the  use  of  her  eyesight  is  to  be 
certainly  ascribed  to  the  same  cause.  We  hear 
sometimes  of  persons  being  cured  by  this  class  of 
healers  of  loss  of  sight.  ''  The  blind  receive  their 
sight!"  has  often  been  the  exulting  cry  of  ^'  Christian 
Scientists  "  when  lauding  their  cult  as  a  new  revela- 
tion. Many  apparent  diseases  of  the  eye  are  due  to 
lapse  of  nerval  force.  If  we  all  lived  long  enough  we 
should  probably  all  suffer  from  cataract,  which  is  the 
clouding  of  the  crystalline  lens.  If  the  life  has  its 
full  vigor,  the  secretions  which  form  that  lens  are 
transparent,  but  if  the  controlling  force  becomes 
enfeebled,  then  the  deposited  material  is  not  clear, 
the  lens  gradually  becomes  opaque,  and  we  say  a 
cataract  is  formed.  There  is  no  evidence,  however, 
that  the  opaque  lens  ever  has  become  again  clear. 
But  sometimes  the  opaqueness  may  occur  in  the 
cornea,  the  clear  material  which  glazes  the  pupil. 
This,  by  an  unskilled  doctor,  is  frequently  confounded 
with  cataract,  and  this  cloudiness  does  become 
clear  again  by  invigorating  the  constitution.  It  is 
quite  possible,  therefore,  to  conceive  this  ailment 
being  removed  by  the  impetus  imparted  by  an  awak- 
ened will,  under  the  application  of  the  methods  of 
''Christian  Science,"  or  other  similar  modes  of  treat- 
ment. So  it  is  of  deafness.  All  the  apparatus  of 
hearing  may  be  in  perfect  condition,  but  if  the  nerves 
are  lazy  and  decline  to  carry  the  impressions  from 
the  ear  to  the  brain,  nothing  is  heard,  and  the  person 


36  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

is  deaf.  But  now  let  some  impetus  be  supplied  to 
the  flow  of  nerval  force,  and  the  deaf  hear ! 

The  same  sort  of  consideration  may  be  applied 
to  rheumatism  and  dyspepsia,  and  many  of  those 
ailments  from  which  w^omen  suffer.  In  all  these 
cases  there  is  no  actual  change  in  the  construction  of 
the  muscles  or  organs,  but  their  normal  action  is 
impeded  either  by  the  lack  of  some  necessary  secre- 
tion, or,  as  in  the  case  of  rheumatism,  by  the  want  of 
the  removal  of  effete  matter.  In  such  cases  will- 
power and  nerval  stimulants  may  remove  the  dis- 
ability and  restore  to  health.  We  may  call  it  nerval 
force,  or  will-power,  or  what  we  like,  but  we  all  know 
it  is  a  veritable  factor  in  maintaining  the  perfect 
working  of  the  body. 

Of  late  years  we  have  learned  that  many  diseases 
are  due  to  the  agency  of  life.  Microbes  infest  us;  they 
float  in  the  air;  they  inhabit,  in  whole  colonies,  dollar 
bills;  they  congregate  on  our  clothing;  they  are  every- 
where. Then  why  is  it  they  do  not  so  find  residence 
in  all  of  us  as  to  produce  constant  diseases?  Several 
persons  are  exposed  to  the  same  infection.  Why  is 
it  that  only  one  of  the  number  takes  the  disease  ? 
"  Because  the  others  were  not  susceptible,"  is  the  usual 
answer.  This  probably  is  due  to  their  nerval  condi- 
tion at  the  time.  Experience  has  long  shown  that  in 
the  morning  hours,  before  the  work  of  the  day  has 
taxed  the  nerval  energy,  infection  has  less  effect. 
As  medical  students  we  were  not  allowed  to  visit  the 
fever  wards  unless  quite  well,  and  in  the  morning. 
Then,  if  this  be  the  case,  anything  which  is  liable  to 
nerve  the  constitution  and  render  it  braced  and  terse 
is  likely  to   reduce  to  a  minimum  the  possibility  of 


MIND   AND    MATTER.  3? 

taking  disease,  and  this  end  is  not  a  little  gained 
by  the  assurance  that  there  is  no  disease  to  con- 
tract, and  that  the  possibility  of  infection  does  not 
exist. 

But  this  mental  stimulant  is  by  no  means  a  specific; 
it  is  only  a  preventative.  And  when  the  microbes 
have  effected  a  lodgment  in  that  particular  gland  or 
locality  where  is  to  be  found  food  upon  which  they 
can  thrive,  then  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  how  they 
can  be  reached  and  killed.  They  must  live  their  life, 
and  "bring  forth  fruit  after  their  kind."  Therefore, 
when  "  Christian  Scientists  "  and  "  divine  healers," 
etc.,  assert  they  can  and  have  cured,  say,  cancer,  the 
statement  is  to  be  received  with  the  gravest  doubt. 
In  my  ministerial  work  I  have  several  times  attended 
to  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  some  who  have 
died  of  cancer,  who  gave  heed  to  these  "seducing 
spirits "  and  yielded  themselves  to  the  fallacious 
teaching  of  these  people,  to  their  great  and  bitter 
regret.  Their  time,  their  short  time,  was  wasted,  and 
worse;  their  mind  and  heart  were  diverted  from 
holding  on  to  Him  who  is  our  only  help  in  time  of 
need;  their  spiritual  sight  was  beclouded  with  a  haze 
of  impersonality — a  comfortless  "all  mind"  or  "infin- 
ite spirit " — and  they  found  to  their  desperate  sorrow 
that  they  had  lost  sight  of  Him  who  alone  saith, 
"Come  unto  Me,  and  I  will  give  you  rest."  "When 
thou  passest  through  the  waters  I  will  be  with  thee." 

There  have  been  also  not  a  few  who  have  brought 
upon  themselves  very  serious  censure.  They  aban- 
doned the  known  hope  surgery  and  medical  remedies 
offer,  and  deliberately  consigned  those,  whom  they 
loved,    to    a   theory    which    cannot    be    proved,  and, 


38  'A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

indeed,  is  continually  disproved.  Such  people  ought 
not  to  be  allowed  so  to  tamper  with  the  sick.  In 
older  countries  the  law  protects  the  helpless  from 
such  harmful  experiments,  by  either  preventing  those 
who  have  not  secured  proper  diplomas  from  profess- 
ing to  cure  diseases,  or  else  preventing  those  who 
have  the  care  of  the  helpless  sick  from  declining  to 
call  in  medical  assistance. 

There  are  some  deluded  people  in  England  who 
call  themselves  "  the  peculiar  people,"  whose  belief  is, 
that  prayer  is  all  that  is  needed  for  the  recovery  of 
the  sick;  and  there  may  often  be  seen  in  the  law 
reports  the  account  of  the  trial,  and  very  proper  im- 
prisonment, of  such  persons,  the  law  defending  the 
helpless,  and  rescuing  them  from  being  the  subjects 
of  crude  and  contradictory  theories;  just  as  the  law 
there  prevents  the  vivisection  of  animals  in  attempts 
to  verify  mere  guesses,  or  to  substantiate  some  theory 
which  is  ill-considered  and  contains  no  probability  of 
being  true. 

Turning  from  this  class  of  disease  to  those  ail- 
ments caused  by  an  actual  displacement  in  the  fabric 
of  the  system,  we  find  the  numerous  sects  of  'mind 
healers'  at  wide  variance  of  opinion. 

Mr.  Henry  Wood,  who  poses  as  the  philosopher  of 
the  "  Christian  Science  "  cult,  and  with  whose  every 
sentence  any  educated  person  would  be  disposed  to 
cavil,  either  as  to  its  form,  or  its  diction,  or  the 
opinion  it  expresses,  roundly  declares  that  when  any 
accident  happens  which  breaks  a  bone  or  dislocates  a 
joint,  the  wise  "  Christian  Scientist  "  will  at  once  call 
in   medical   aid. 

Not  so,  Mrs.  Eddy.     She  is  by  no  means   disposed 


MIND   AND   MATTER.  39 

to  allow  that  "divine  man  "  is  in  any  direction  limited. 

"Christian  Science"  (she  says,  p.  400)  is  always  the  most 
skillful  surgeon,  but  surgery  is  the  branch  of  its  healing  which 
will  be  last  demonstrated.  However,  it  is  but  just  to  say  that 
the  author  has  already  in  her  possession  well-authenticated 
records  of  the  cure,  by  herself  and  her  students,  through  mental 
surgery  alone,  of  dislocated  joints  and  spinal  vertebra. 

Politeness  would  forbid  us  to  contradict  a  lady, 
but  we  may  venture  to  question  "  the  well-authenti- 
cated.'' Nothing  is  more  rare  than  to  have  "an 
unvarnished  tale,"  and  nothing  more  difficult  than  to 
wipe  off  the  accretions  of  inaccuracy.  If  every  story 
of  a  cured  disability  was  sifted  to  its  source,  it  would 
be  soon  apparent  that  none  of  these  'mind  healers' 
ever  have  or  ever  will  restore  to  its  place  a  dislocated 
bone,  or  mend  a  fracture. 

Dr.  Buckley,  in  the  March  number  of  the  "  Cen- 
tury "  for  1887,  gives  the  natural  history  of  one  of 
these  stories,  and,  as  it  is  a  sample  of  all  the  rest,  I 
quote  it.  It  is  thus  narrated  by  the  late  W.  E.  Board- 
man,  who  says  the  story  was  told  him  by  Dr.  Cullis. 
Dr.  Gordon  has  reproduced  it  in  his  "  Mystery  of 
Healing."  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  three  better 
men  than  these,  each  of  them  celebrated  for  personal 
piety  and  for  widespread  evangelical  influence;  each 
of  them  quite  incapable  of  knowingly  varying  from 
the  exact  truth,  and  yet  see  how  all  three  assisted  in 
the  production  and  the  continuing  of  a  wholly  false 
account.  Here  is  the  story,  in  the  graphic  telling  of 
Mr.  Boardman,  who  apparently  adopts  the  language 
of  the  father: 

"The  children  were  jumping  off  from  a  bench,  and 
my  little  son  fell   and  broke  both  bones  of  his  ar?n  below 


40  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

the  elbow.  My  brother,  who  is  a  professor  of  surgery 
in  the  college  at  Chicago,  was  here  on  a  visit.  I 
asked  him  to  set  and  dress  the  arm.  He  did  so,  put 
it  in  splints,  bandages,  and  in  a  sling.  The  dear 
child  was  very  patient,  and  went  about  without  a 
murmur  all  that  day. 

"The  next  morning  he  came  to  me  and  said,  'Dear 
papa,  please  take  off  these  things  ?'  '  Oh,  no,  my  son; 
you  will  have  to  wear  these  five  or  six  weeks  before 
it  will  be  well.'  'Why,  papa,  it  is  well.'  'Oh,  no, 
my  dear  child,  that  is  impossible.'  'Why,  papa,  you 
believe  in  prayer,  don't  you?'  'You  know  I  do,  my 
son.'  'Well,  last  night  when  I  went  to  bed  it  hurt  me 
very  bad,  and  I  asked  Jesus  to  make  it  well.' 

"I  did  not  like  to  say  a  word  to  chill  his  faith.  A 
happy  thought  came.  I  said,  '  My  dear  child,  your 
uncle  put  the  things  on,  and  if  they  are  taken  off  he 
must  do  it.'  Away  he  went  to  his  uncle,  who  told 
him  he  would  have  to  go  as  he  was  six  or  seven 
weeks,  and  must  be  very  patient.  When  the  little 
fellow  told  him  Jesus  had  made  him  well  he  said, 
'Pooh!  pooh!  nonsense,'  and  sent  him  away.  The 
next  morning  the  poor  boy  came  to  me  and  pleaded 
with  so  much  sincerity  and  confidence  that  I  more 
than  half  believed,  and  went  to  my  brother  and  said 
to  him,  '  Had  you  not  better  undo  his  arm  and  let 
him  see  for  himself  ?  Then  he  will  be  satisfied.  If  you 
do  not,  I  fear,  though  he  is  very  obedient,  he  may  be 
tempted  to  undo  it  himself,  and  then  it  may  be  worse 
for  him.'  My  brother  yielded,  and  took  off  the  band- 
ages and  the  splints,  and  exclaimed,  'It  is  well,  abso- 
lutely well  !'  and  hastened  to  the  door  to  keep  from 
fainting." 


MIND   AND    MATTER.  "  41 

Now,  if  this  were  a  narrative  under  the  inspection 
of  "a  higher  critic,"  scanning  it  for  signs  of  genuine- 
ness, he  would  undoubtedly  find  many. 

But  the  case  was  thoroughly  investigated  by  Dr. 
Lloyd,  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  in 
*'The  Medical  Record"  for  March  27,  1886,  he  pub- 
lished a  letter  from  the  very  child,  now  grown  up  and 
a  physician: 

"Dear  Sir: 

"  The  case  you  cite,  when  robbed  of  all  its  sen- 
sational surroundings,  is  as  follows: 

"The  child  was  a  spoiled  youngster,  who  would 
have  his  own  way,  and  when  he  had  2i  green  stick  frac- 
ture of  the  forearm,  and,  having  had  it  bandaged  for 
several  days,  concluded  he  would  much  prefer  going 
without  a  splint.  To  please  the  spoiled  child  the 
splint  was  removed,  and  the  arm  carefully  adjusted 
in  a  sling.  As  a  matter  of  course,  the  bone  soon 
united,  as  is  customary  in  children,  and,  being  only 
partially  broken,  of  course  all  the  sooner.  This  is  the 
miracle. 

"  Some  nurse,  or  crank,  or  religious  enthusiast, 
ignorant  of  matters  physiological  and  histological, 
evidently  started  the  story,  and  unfortunately  my 
name — for  I  am  the  party — is  being  circulated  in 
circles  of  faith  curists,  and  is  given  the  sort  of 
notoriety  I  do  not  crave.     .     .     . 

"  Very  respectfully  yours, 

"  Carl  H.  Reed." 

Ex  uno  disce  omnes  ! 

Considering  that  the  discoverer  of  this  beneficent 
revelation  is  a  woman,  and  that  by  far  the  greater 
number    of    its    devotees   are   women,   it   would   be 


42  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

Strange,  indeed,  if  that  great  trial  of  womanhood, 
child-birth,  were  not  to  be  dealt  with.  On  p.  77,  in 
"Science  and  Health,"  Mrs.  Eddy  narrates  a  painless 
labor  she  presided  over  in  Lynn,  Mass.,  in  1874,  and 
then,  mirabile  dictu!  this  great  and  pressing  subject 
is  barely  mentioned.  In  the  index,  indeed,  there  is 
not  a  little  reference  under  "Child-Birth,"  "Obstet- 
rics," and  "  Parturition,"  but  most  of  the  page  refer- 
ences are  the  same,  and  the  total  result  is  sadly  disap- 
pointing. The  whole  desire  of  an  expectant  mother  is 
to  avoid  pain,  and  here  are  all  the  crumbs  of  comfort, 
the  high  priestess  of  a  cult  whose  chief  profession  is 
to  banish  pain,  herself  vouchsafes  to  her  eager  listen- 
ers. On  page  447,  under  the  head  of  "Obstetrics," 
we  have  : 

Teacher  and  students  should  also  be  familiar  with  the 
obstetrics  taught  by  the  science. 

With  this  brave  heading  we  may  well  imagine 
many  an  anxious  woman  took  heart,  and  with  joyous 
expectation  read  on,  only  to  find,  after  yearning  for 
bread,  Mrs.  Eddy  offers  a  stone  ! 

To  attend  properly  the  birth  of  the  new  child,  or  the  Divine 
idea,  you  should  so  detach  mortal  thought  from  its  material 
conceptions  that  the  birth  will  be  natural  and  safe. 

Then  follows  some  very  cautious  and  mysterious 
language.  Mrs.  Eddy  takes  great  care  not  to  promise 
painlessness  in  the  process,  and  she  is  much  too 
adroit  to  submit  the  truth  of  her  theories  to  an 
experimental  test,  such  as  must  often  and  inevitably 
occur  to  "  Christian  Science  "  women.  She  there- 
fore lets  one  of  them  state  a  single  experience  of 
more  than  twenty  years  ago,  she  herself  avoiding  any 
assertion.     Surely,    during    the   time   her   book   has 


MIND   AND   MATTER.  43 

been  multiplying  to  one  hundred  and  five  editions, 
thousands  have  had  the  opportunity  to  learn  how 
their  theories  stood  the  test  of  that  great  trial.  By 
this  time  the  evidence  must  have  become  such  an 
accumulated  mass  as  to  triumphantly  declare  the 
truth  of  the  "Christian  Science"  theories,  if  there 
is  any  truth  whatever  in  them.  But  where  is  it? 
There  is  none!  or  it  would  have  been  only  too  eagerly 
forthcoming.  Mrs.  Eddy,  in  a  late  edition  of  her 
book,  evidently  is  dissatisfied  with  the  testimony  of 
the  mothers;  her  expectations  are  in  the  future;  this 
she  states  in  a  sentence  of  curious  indefiniteness.  If 
a  charlatan,  convicted  hopelessly  of  fraud,  wants  to 
study  a  mode  of  verbiage  under  which  to  cover  his 
retreat,  I  commend  him  to  this  clever  passage.  It  is 
a  continuation  of  what  I  have  just  quoted: 

Through  gathering  new  energies,  an  idea  should  injure  none 
of  its  useful  surroundings  in  the  travail  of  spiritual  birth.  It 
should  not  have  within  it  a  single  element  of  error,  and  should 
remove  properly  whatever  is  offensive.  Then  would  the  new 
idea,  conceived  and  born  of  Truth  and  Love,  be  clad  in  white 
garments.  Its  beginning  will  be  meek,  its  growth  sturdy,  and 
its  maturity  undecaying.  When  this  new  birth  takes  place,  the 
"Christian  Science"  infant  is  born  of  the  Spirit,  and  can 
cause  the  mother  no  more  suffering.  Thus  it  will  always  be 
when  Truth  is  allowed  to  fulfill  her  perfect  work! 

This  is  the  only  utterance  of  the  oracle  in  response 
to  the  most  imperative  demand  of  womanhood;  here 
is  the  one  case  of  all  others  where  the  ''  Christian 
Science"  theory  might  be  expected  to  be  worth  some- 
thing; and  what  is  it  ?  A  passage  of  such  clever  non- 
committal as  the  priests  of  Delphi  themselves  might 
well  envy! 

Oh  !  ye  disappointed  mothers,  will  not  your  suffer- 


U  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

ings  teach  you  to  estimate  the  worth  of  this  delusion, 
and  discard  a  teaching  so  utterly  at  variance  with 
your  experiences  ! 

Occasionally  the  will  may  reduce  the  pain;  but  these 
theories  are  not  essential  to  mental  determination, 
and  occasionally  nature  is  so  sympathetic  that  the 
ordeal  is  passed  with  scarce  inconvenience.  The 
other  day,  in  this  neighborhood,  a  doctor  left  a  woman 
a  happy  mother  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  He 
returned  at  nine,  to  see  if  all  was  right.  He  took  his 
breakfast  at  the  restaurant  which  she  and  her  hus- 
band kept,  and  he  found  that  his  patient  had  fried 
the  oysters  ! 

The  practice  of  every  medical  man  will  furnish 
similar  instances;  and  if  a  votary  of  "  Christian 
Science  "  is  so  spared  as  to  have  a  painless  delivery, 
then  it  was  a  combination  of  circumstances  which 
favored  her,  and  she  owed  nothing  whatever  to  Mrs. 
Eddy  or  her  teachings. 

Let  anyone  consult  *' The  Influence  of  the  Mind 
Upon  the  Body,"  by  Dr.  Tuke,  and  he  will  there 
find  instances  of  almost  every  disease  being  cured  by 
the  action  of  the  mind — inflammatory  rheumatism, 
dropsy,  and  what  was  apparently  a  case  of  far-gone 
consumption   amongst  the  rest. 

There  is  no  evil  that  does  not  bring  with  it  some 
good;  and  if  the  delusion  of  this  "Science"  works 
evil  to  many  it  may  not  be  wholly  useless  if  only 
the  attention  of  this  generation  is  turned  to  the 
power  that  mind,  rightly  directed,  may  exert  over 
disease. 

To  sum  up,  then,  the  conclusions  pointed  to  by  the 
experiences  we  have  cited.   It  may  be  safely  held  that 


MIND  AND  MATTER.  45 

will-power    has   a   very    evident    and    decided    con- 
trol   over    the    body;    that   God  never   intended    his 
people   to    have  immunity   from   those   ills  to  which 
flesh  is  heir;  but  that  sickness  is  to  be  treated,  as  all 
the  other  disciplines  of  life,  as  a  means  of  spiritual 
education.     The  injunction  of  S.   James  that  the  sick 
might  call  for  the   Elders  of  the  Church,  and  have 
them    anoint   the   patient  with   oil  and   pray  for  re- 
covery, was  never  intended  as  a  substitute  for  medi- 
cal treatment,  but   to   supply  that  Godly  dependence 
which  was  never  inculcated  by  physicians  of  that  day 
and    seldom    by    their    brethren    of    this   generation. 
The  words   of  Jesus,   the  Son  of  Sirach,  in  Ecclesias- 
ticus  xxxviii.,   express,   no   doubt,   the  sentiments  of 
S.  Paul  and  his  friend,  ''the  beloved  Physician,"  as 
the  attachment  of  S.  Luke  to  the  great  apostle  indi- 
cates in  what  light  they  held  the  words  of  S.  James  : 
"Honor  a  physician  with    the  honor  due  unto   him, 
for  the  uses  ye  may  have  of  him:  for  the  Lord  hath 
created  him.      For  of  the  Most   High   cometh   heal- 
ing.    .    .    .     The  Lord  hath  created  medicines  out  of 
the  earth;  and  he  that  is  wise  will  not  abhor  them. 
Was  not  the  water  made  sweet  with  wood,  that  the 
virtue  thereof  might  be  known  ?     And  He  hath  given 
men  skill,  that  He  might  be  honored  in   his  marvel- 
lous works.     With  such  doth  He  heal  men  and  taketh 
away  their  pains.     ...     My  son,  in  thy  sickness  be 
not   negligent.     But  pray  unto  the  Lord,  and  He  will 
make  thee  whole.     .    .    .    Then  give  place  to  the  phy- 
sician, for  the  Lord  hath  created  him:  let  him  go  not 
from  thee,  for  thou  hast  need  of  him.    ...    He  that 
sinneth  before  his  Maker  let  him  fall  into  the  hand 
of  the  physician"— and  let  all  the  people  say.  Amen. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

"  CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE  "    HEALING. 

IT  is  now  beginning  to  be  recognized  that  the 
human  mind  is  not  one  uniform  and  homo- 
geneous machine;  it  contains  wheels  within  wheels. 
To  the  close  observer  it  becomes  evident  that  parts 
of  the  mind  are  capable  of  almost  independent  action. 
It  is  a  common  experience  with  men  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  speak  in  public  that  they  are  conscious 
of  two  currents  of  thoughts,  the  lips  pronouncing 
the  one,  and  the  other  part  of  the  mind  preparing 
for  what  is  to  come  next,  or  probably  making  some 
observation  connected  with  their  audience  which 
shall  modify  their  mode  of  address.  We  seem  to  be 
arriving  at  the  conclusion  that  beneath  the  active 
surface  of  the  mind  there  lies  an  inactive  but  recip- 
ient mental  plane,  which  has  been  called  the  'sub- 
jective mind.'  This  mental  department  appears  to 
receive  involuntarily,  whatever  impression  the  senses 
impart  to  it,  and  faithfully  to  retain  them,  although 
what  we  may  call  the  active  and  observing  depart- 
ment of  the  mind  may  make  no  attempt  whatever 
intelligently  to  understand,  or  to  retain,  the  impres- 
sions so  made. 

A   very   typical    instance    of    this    observation    is 
recorded  by  Mr.  Hudson  in  his  "Physic  Phenomena," 


"CHRISTIAN   SCIENCE"   HEALING.  47 

where  it  is  related  that  a  servant  girl  at  Gottingen, 
in  the  delirium  of  typhoid  fever,  uttered  sentences 
in  Greek,  Hebrew  and  Latin  on  theological  subjects. 
Many  of  these  sentences  were  written  down.  The 
history  of  the  girl  was  traced  by  one  of  the  attend- 
ing physicians;  and  he  found  that  she  had  once  been 
in  the  service  of  a  learned  Lutheran  pastor,  who  was 
in  the  habit  of  walking  up  and  down  a  passage  in 
his  house,  a  door  from  which  opened  into  the  kitchen 
where  the  girl  was  working,  and  reading  aloud  from 
the  works  of  Greek  and  Latin  fathers.  The  pastor 
was  dead,  but  he  found  his  sister  alive,  who  still 
possessed  his  library;  and  his  painstaking  search  was 
rewarded  by  the  discovery,  in  the  favorite  authors  of 
the  deceased  minister,  of  the  actual  sentences  that  the 
girl  had   recited   in   her  delirium. 

The  only  way  of  accounting  for  this  is  to  suppose 
that  the  sounds  which  fell  upon  her  ear,  and  could 
have  been  of  no  possible  interest  to  her,  were  faith- 
fully registered  as  they  had  been  received,  by  that 
part  of  her  mind  which  has  been  termed  'subjective;' 
and  during  the  process  of  the  disease,  certain  con- 
ditions had  been  arrived  at  by  which  the  contents 
of  that  part  of  the  mind  were  re-delivered  to  the 
organs  of  speech,  and  without  any  mental  effort 
of  her  own  she  reproduced,  with  something  of  the 
pomposity  of  voice  in  which  they  had  been  origin- 
ally delivered  to  it,  the  very  sentences,  in  unknown 
tongues,  which  had  reached  her  ears  years  before. 

That  this  subjective  mind  does  exist,  and  faithfully 
retains  all  the  impressions  it  has  received,  has  fre- 
quent evidence  in  the  sudden  recollection  of  a  series 
of  events  which  apparently  had  been  absolutely  for- 


46  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

gotten.  It  is  a  common  occurrence  with  persons  on 
the  brink  of  sudden  death,  especially  if  they  are 
drowning,  to  declare  that,  with  fearful  rapidity,  the 
whole  of  their  past  lives,  even  to  minute  details, 
passed  in  rapid  panorama  before  their  mental  view. 

If  we  admit  the  existence  of  this  compartment  of 
the  mind,  we  may  have  some  explanation  of  the 
facts  of  hypnotism.  A  well-known  nerval  specialist 
tells  me  he  has  successfully  treated  certain  dypso- 
maniacs  by  hypnotizing  them,  and  impressing  upon 
their  subjective  mind  the  fact  that  alcohol  would 
make  them  violently  sick,  which  thereafter  it  invaria- 
bly does.  One  of  his  patients  lately,  not  having 
touched  strong  drink  for  a  year  or  more,  attended 
a  public  dinner.  Of  course  he  took  no  wine,  but 
in  the  sauce  for  the  pudding  at  the  end  of  the  dinner 
there  was  some  rum;  tasting  of  it,  he  hurriedly  left 
the  table  to  carry  out  the  "  suggestion  "  made  over  a 
year  since. 

This  glimpse  into  the  construction  of  the  mind,  and 
the  wonderful  capacity  of  its  '  subjective '  province, 
will  lend  us  no  little  aid  in  offering  some  explana- 
tion of  the  numerous  cures  effected  by  "Christian 
Science"  and  kindred   beliefs. 

A  frequent  experience  of  "Christian  Science" 
healing,  which  is  triumphantly  pointed  to  as  proof 
positive  of  the  truth  of  the  theory,  is  that  a  sufferer 
was  healed  by  the  perusal  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  book,  quite 
apart  from  the  influence  of  any  healer,  or  the  effect 
of  'the  sympathy  of  numbers'  in  a  community  of 
"  Christian  Scientists."  The  explanation  of  this 
effect  may  not  be  far  to  seek. 

It   must  be  remembered   that,  speaking  generally, 


"CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE"    HEALING.  49 

the  ills  to  which  flesh  is  commonly  heir  may  be 
divided  into  two  classes.  Those  which  are  due  to 
the  invasion  of  the  body  by  foreign  life,  and  those 
which  may  be  ascribed  to  disturbed  nerval  action. 
Of  the  former,  phthisis,  pneumonia,  diphtheria,  can- 
cer, typhoid,  typhus  and  scarlet  fevers,  with  some 
other  ailments,  are  now  definitely  known  to  be  the 
result  of  the  disturbance  due  to  the  invasion  of 
certain  localities  by  microbes.  These  organisms, 
which  are  mostly  of  a  vegetable  nature,  can  be  easily 
seen  and  recognized  under  the  microscope.  Like 
other  orders  of  life,  they  have  their  day  and  genera- 
tion. They  breed  profusely,  and  exhaust  all  the 
nutriment  they  find  in  the  gland  they  have  invaded. 
This  gland  the  meanwhile  is  incapacitated  for  its 
normal  action,  and  the  whole  body,  lacking  that 
which  the  injured  gland  should  supply,  is  thrown 
into  disturbance.  After  the  marauders  have  appro- 
priated all  they  can  get,  they  die  for  lack  of  supply; 
then  nature  sets  to  work  to  repair  the  damage  of 
the  raid,  and  the  patient  gradually  recovers. 

Of  the  number  of  the  host  of  the  invaders  few 
people  have  any  conception.  A  young  doctor,  who 
is  given  to  this  department  of  his  profession,  told 
me  the  other  day  that  he  had  caused  one  of  his 
patients  to  bring  to  him  the  sputa  he  had  expec- 
torated in  the  morning.  By  dividing  it  by  weight, 
and  then  counting  the  baccilli  under  the  microscope 
in  a  fractional  part,  he  found  that  in  the  quantity 
brought  there  could  not  be  less  than  5,500,000! 
What  must  have  been  the  number  of  the  host 
entrenched   in   the  poor  fellow's  lungs! 

It  looks  as  impossible,  as  it  is  improbable,  that  any 


50  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

power  of  mind  can  kill  these  invaders  directly,  yet, 
unless  they  can  be  either  destroyed  or  incapacitated, 
that  disturbance  we  call  fever  must  continue.  This 
class  of  diseases  have  not  and  cannot  be  cured  by 
"Christian  Science,"  despite  that  it  is  frequently  as- 
serted that  this  is  done.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  nerval  derangement,  or  that  obstruction  to  the 
normal  tides  of  life  we  call  congestion,  may  frequently 
give  rise  to  symptoms  by  which  the  unskillful  eye  is 
deceived,  and  often  the  disease  is  called  by  the  more 
serious  name,  when  a  far  less  cause  of  disturbance 
was  really  the  ailment. 

It  is  high  time  that  State  authorities  defended  the 
public  from  the  mischief  done  by  "Christian  Sci- 
ence "  healers,  who  are  wholly  ignorant  of  the  causes 
of  the  ailments  of  their  'patients.' 

They  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  practice  upon  any 
case,  unless  a  medical  opinion  has  first  been  obtained 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  disease;  and  if  the  invalids  are 
found  to  be  suffering  from  any  of  the  class  of  dis- 
eases of  which  we  are  speaking,  they  ought  to  be 
handed  over  to  properly  authorized  medical  men. 

In  every  community  inflicted  by  this  novel  cult, 
cases  of  life-long  remorse  can  be  told,  of  children 
with  scarlet  and  typhoid  fever,  whose  lives  were  in 
all  probability  wantonly  sacrificed  by  the  preposter- 
ous assumption  of  the  healer  and  the  astounding 
credulity  of  the  parents.  These  heartbroken  people 
cling  to  the  flimsy  theory  to  which  they  committed 
the  life  of  their  precious  child  with  an  agony  of  des- 
peration; for  if  they  ever  come  to  doubt  it,  and  discard 
it,  they  must  accuse  themselves  of  the  untimely  death 
of  their  innocent! 


"CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE"    HEALING.  51 

But  the  second  class  of  ailments,  which  are  chiefly 
due  to  nerval  derangement,  are  the  legitimate  quarry 
of  any  set  of  practitioners  who  can  bring  to  bear  the 
mind  of  the  sufferer  to  set  to  rights  the  disorder. 

Faith  curers,  mind  healers,  mesmeric  healers,  ''Di- 
vine Scientists,"  and  "Christian  Scientists"  and  com- 
pany, can   none  of   them   do  much   harm,  and   often 
great   good,  by  their  various  treatments  of   this  class 
of  ailments.     If   any  cure  be  effected,  it  has  nothing 
to   do    with    the   truth   or  untruth  of    the  particular 
theory    of    the    professor;    it    is    simply  that  by  his 
methods  the  mind  is  directed  to  the  trouble,  and  the 
normal  condition  of  the  body  is  stimulated  to  reassert 
itself.     Success  greatly,  nay,  often  entirely,  depends 
upon  the  disposition  of  the  mind  of  the  patient,  the 
nerval  susceptibility,  and  the  strength  of  the  expecta- 
tion.    If  these  be  favorable,  then  a  perusal  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  book  is  no  small  mesmerizing  condition.    The 
constant    repetition   of    senseless  sentences   confuses 
and  benumbs  the   faculties  of  the  active  layer  of  the 
mind,    in    which    dwells    the    intelligence;   the    'sub- 
jective '  mind  beneath  is  strongly  impressed  with  the 
desired    'wholeness;'  and   it   is   the   liberation,  as  it 
were,  of  this  mental  power  to  see  to  the  repair  of  the 
damage,  which  really  causes  the  cure.     The  vast  mass 
of  those  who  are  relieved  are  women,  and  there  is  a 
sentence  which  is  constantly  being  repeated  by  "Scien- 
tists,"  which    really  is    the  confession   of   their  own 
secret  consciousness,  and  which   tells  volumes  of  the 
causes  of  their  ailments.     They  assure  their  votaries 
that  '  sin  must  be  removed,'  and  after  the  cure,  '  that 
they  must  go  and  sin  no  more,'  which  must  be  to  no 
small  number  very  pertinent  advice. 


52  «'  A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

That  a  mesmeric  element  enters  into  the  process,  I 
saw  curiously  illustrated,  when  one  of  the  lights  of 
the  cult  in  denouncing  Mrs.  Cramer,  the  leader  of  the 
opposition,  "The  Divine  Healers,"  declared  with  the 
utmost  vigor,  "She  heals  by  mesmerism — by  hyp- 
notism."    We  easily  discern  our  own  faults  in  others. 

We  have  still  to  supply  some  explanation  of  those 
cures  which  are  said  to  have  been  performed  '  by  ab- 
sent treatment; '  that  is,  by  the  effect  of  one  mind 
upon  another,  either  near  or  far  off. 

All  things  are  possible,  but  this  can  only  be 
accepted  as  fact,  after  careful  investigation  of 
several  cases,  and  as  yet  I  have  never  seen  evi- 
dence sufficient  to  warrant  the  belief  that  such  cures 
have  been  wrought.  But  if  they  have,  then  their  ex- 
planation must  be  sought  for  in  the  direction  of  that 
mental  sympathy,  and  even  actual  communion  of 
thought,  which  appears  to  exist  between  certain  per- 
sons, under  certain  conditions.  This  chapter  would 
expand  to  the  size  of  a  volume,  to  recount  all  the  in- 
stances within  reach  which  go  to  prove  that  there 
exists  a  subtle  communication  between  some  persons. 

A  physician  tells  me  he  has  in  his  practice  a  family, 
consisting  now  of  the  father  and  mother  and  three 
children;  that  when  each  of  these  children  came  into 
the  world  the  father  suffered  pains  which  were  syn- 
chronous and  equally  severe  as  those  of  the  mother! 

Dr.  Tuke,  in  his  work  on  the  effect  of  sympathy, 
narrates  the  instance  of  a  lady  who  was  greatly  at- 
tached to  a  little  child.  The  child,  running  through 
a  garden-gate  towards  her,  had  its  ankle  caught  by 
the  iron  gate  closing  quickly  behind  it.  She  felt  a 
sharp  pain  in  her  own  ankle,  and  on  reaching  home 


"CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE"    HEALING.  53 

found  it  much  swollen,  and  the  mark  of  the  gate,  as  if 
it  had  crushed  her  own  foot  and  not  that  of  the 
child.  This  much  must  suffice  to  indicate  the  close- 
ness of  the  chain  of  sympathy  which  binds  some 
people  into  almost  one.  Everybody's  experience  can 
furnish  numerous  similar  instances. 

That  other  condition,  essential  to  the  theory  of 
'absent  treatment,'  the  communication  of  one  mind 
with  another,  is  a  much-debated  question.  But,  per- 
sonally, I  am  convinced  that  under  advantageous 
circumstances  this,  too,  is  possible.  The  requisite 
conditions,  however,  are  so  seldom  found  in  con- 
junction that  it  almost  precludes  their  general  ap- 
plication as  an  explanation  of  cure  by  '  absent  treat- 
ment.' Still,  the  conditions  do  exist,  and  it  is  pos- 
sible that  one  or  two  peculiarly  advantageous 
circumstances  may  have  presented  themselves,  and, 
under  them,  cures  at  a  distance  may  have  been 
wrought;  and  the  fame  of  these  isolated  instances 
have  given  countenance  to  a  host  of  dubious  rela- 
tives, who,  if  strictly  examined,  would  turn  out  to  be 
either  mistakes  or  impostures. 

Out  of  many  personal  instances  I  shall  only  state 
one,  itself  sufficient  to  prove  the  possibility.  When 
an  undergraduate,  spending  my  vacation  in  my 
father's  parish  in  a  Yorkshire  dale,  there  came  to  the 
town  a  conjurer,  Signor  Barnado,  a  tall,  imposing 
man,  with  a  black  beard.  Part  of  his  entertainment 
was  the  exhibition  of  a  clairvoyant,  who  was  in  the 
habit  of  cleverly  describing  articles  given  to  the  con- 
jurer by  the  audience,  or  repeating  sentences  silently 
recited  by  him.  It  was  evident  that  all  this  could 
not  be  done   except  upon    the  supposition  that  she 


54  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

could  read  his  mind.  I  had  a  friend,  a  country  gen- 
tleman, then  at  his  fishing  box,  some  thirty  miles 
away  at  the  side  of  a  trout  stream.  I  well  knew  the 
room  he  sat  in  in  the  evening,  and  I  wrote  to  him, 
telling  him  to  be  examining  his  fly-book  at  9  o'clock 
next  Tuesday  evening.  As  the  hour  arrived  I  stood 
up  in  the  audience,  and  said  to  the  conjurer:  "  I  have 
a  friend  thirty  miles  from  here.  I  want  to  know 
what  he  is  doing  and  where  he  is."  Barnado  asked 
me  if  I  knew  what  he  was  about;  I  replied,  I  did.  He 
put  the  question  to  the  blindfolded  girl,  and  she 
began  to  describe  my  friend  to  the  life,  his  fresh  face, 
his  blue-spotted  silk  necktie,  his  gold  spectacles,  the 
mahogany  furniture,  the  green-figured  cloth  on  the 
table,  the  fluted  silver  candlesticks;  he  was  reading  a 
book.  ''What  is  it  about?"  asked  Barnado.  "I 
do  not  know,"  said  the  girl.  "  Turn  to  the  title-page 
and  read  it."  "There  is  no  title-page."  Then  sud- 
denly, after  a  short  pause,  she  said,  "It's  about  fly- 
fishing." 

"Now,"  I  said,  "what  is  the  name  of  the  village?" 
Barnado  asked  me  if  I  would  tell  him,  and  he  would 
stand  near  me,  and  away  from  the  platform,  but  I 
replied  that  I  preferred  not  to  do  so.  He  then 
asked  the  girl  if  she  could  tell,  and  after  a  moment 
or  two  she  rightly  replied,  "  Pateley  Bridge." 

As  this  very  interesting  episode  was  in  progress,  I 
found  she  was  reading  my  mind.  As  I  arranged  the 
furniture  of  the  room,  so  she  did  ;  as  I  pictured  the 
fluted  silver  candlesticks,  so  exactly  she  described 
them;  and  if  I  had  put  on  the  end  of  my  tongue  that 
my  friend  was  fishing  at  Timbuctoo,  she  would  have 
said  so. 


"CHRISTIAN   SCIENCE"    HEALING.  55 

I  have  always  been  thankful  I  had  this  experience 
when  I  was  a  young  man.  For  by  its  revelation  I 
have  laid  to  rest  the  perturbed  mind  of  many  and 
many  a  person,  greatly  disturbed  by  the  pretended 
revelation  of  some  spiritualistic  medium. 

The  'communications'  made  by  these  people  are 
entirely  picked  out  of  the  minds  of  their  dupes,  and 
presented  as  messages  from  dead  friends. 

As  I  am  writing  this,  I  have  seated  in  my  study  a 
very  intelligent  Hindoo  lady,  and  she  corroborates 
what  I  have  always  held,  that  the  feats  so  often 
ascribed  to  the  occultism  of  the  Hindoos,  of  seeing 
men  throw  ropes  into  the  air,  and  then  swarming 
up  them;  making  tamarind  trees  grow  at  once  before 
your  eyes,  and  all  those  marvellous  'tricks'  supposed 
to  be  done  by  the  'adepts,'  so  beloved  of  Theoso- 
phists,  are  all  worked  by  hypnotism,  by  processes 
she  has  never  heard  explained.  Many  of  the  by- 
standers are  hypnotized,  and  made,  by  adroit  sugges- 
tion, to  believe  they  see  things  which  are  only  sub- 
jective and  not  objective;  the  creation  of  their  own 
thought,  and  not  actual  existences. 

If,  then,  the  human  mind  is  capable  of  these  im- 
pressions, it  is  not  stating  an  impossible  suggestion 
that  the  healing  of  maladies  due  to  nerval  derange- 
ment is  perfectly  possible  by  the  reading  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  mesmerizing  book,  or  even  by  the  mental 
suggestion  of  an  absent  healer,  who  usually  puts  her 
patient  en  rapport  with  herself  by  arranging  the  hour 
of  the  treatment.  This  hypnotic  restraint  of  the 
'active'  mind  sets  free  the  'subjective'  mind  to 
work,  with  its  strange  power,  the  'suggestion'  im- 
pressed upon  it. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    DOCTRINE    OF    "  CHRISTIAN    SCIENCE." 

A  COUNTERFEIT  dollar  bill  frequently  passes 
current,  and  as  long  as  its  falseness  is  unde- 
tected it  will  purchase  exactly  as  much  as  its  legiti- 
mate representative.  The  possessor  of  the  bill  is 
quite  satisfied  with  it.  He  rejoices  in  its  possession, 
and  until  an  expert  discovers  the  fraud,  and  he  sud- 
denly becomes  aware  that  his  money  has  vanished, 
and  he  only  possesses  a  piece  of  very  dirty  paper, 
he  builds  his  hopes  upon  it.  He  may  be  depending 
upon  it  to  defray  a  pressing  liability.  Imagine 
his  revulsion  of  feeling  when,  at  the  moment  he 
most  needs  it,  it  proves  worthless,  and  leaves  him 
unable  to  pay  his  lawful  debt,  a  hopeless  bankrupt! 

A  no  more  momentous  question  can  any  one  con- 
sider, than,  upon  what  his  hopes  for  eternity  are  built. 
Has  he  any  certain  assurance  that  when  he  closes  his 
eyes  on  this  world,  he  will  be  with  Jesus  Christ  and 
his  servants  in  Paradise,  in  the  next  world  ? 

In  three  chapters  in  S.  Matthew's  Gospel  we  have 
preserved  for  us  "  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount."  It  is 
the  authoritative  declaration  by  our  Lord,  wherein 
his  teaching  differed  from  that  inculcated  by  the 
clergy  of  the  day.  A  great  many  things  they  taught 
with  which   He   agreed;  these  He  does  not  mention; 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  "CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE."       57 

there  is  nothing  here  about  public  worship,  althougli 
it  was  his  wont  to  attend,  and  probably  regularly 
attend,  the  Synagogue  service.  "  Wist  ye  not,"  said 
He  to  his  anxious  mother,  "  that  I  must  be  in  my 
Father's  house  ?"  There  is  nothing  here  about  offering 
sacrifices  and  the  ritual  of  ceremonial  worship.  And 
yet  He  came  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfill  the  Law. 
Those  who  flatter  themselves  that  their  "  forsaking 
the  assembling  of  themselves  together  "  finds  sanc- 
tion from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  are  grievously 
mistaken.  This  proclamation,  together  with  the 
undisputed  requirements  of  the  Law,  common  to  the 
teaching  of  our  Lord  and  the  Scribes,  is  an  authori- 
tative statement  of  the  religion  revealed  in  the  Word 
of  God.  This  is  the  declaration  by  Him,  who  best 
knew,  how  the  men  of  the  earth  may  enter  the  King- 
dom of  God. 

At  the  end  of  his  sermon  he  gathered  the  prin- 
ciples he  had  been  announcing  and  illustrating  into 
a  practical  application;  and  if  we  were  not  so  familiar 
with  the  words,  they  would  take  away  our  breath 
every  time  we  read  them.  He  says  :  "  Not  everyone 
that  saith  unto  me.  Lord,  Lord,  shall  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of 
my  Father,  which  is  in  heaven." 

There  are  people  who  say  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
never  laid  claim  to  Divinity;  they  surely  never  read 
this  passage.  With  what  awful  wonder  must  some  of 
those  who  heard  Him  that  day  have  listened,  as  that 
quiet-looking  countryman,  without  any  voluble  assev- 
eration, declared  that  He  was  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  ! 

**Many  will    say  to   Me  in  that  day,  Lord,  Lord, 


58  "A  WAY  THAT  SEEMETH  RIGHT." 

have  we  not  prophesied  in  thy  name?  and  in  thy 
name  have  cast  out  devils  ?  and  in  thy  name  have 
done  many  wonderful  works? 

Then  will  I  profess  unto  them,  I  never  knew  you; 
depart  from  Me,  ye  that  work  iniquity." 

There  is  little  doubt  that  the  presence  of  the  last 
word,  "iniquity,"  has  hitherto  deprived  this  passage  of 
its  vital  moment.  If  "  preaching  in  Christ's  name  " 
and  "  casting  out  devils  "  and  "  doing  many  wonder- 
ful works"  be  counted  "iniquity,"  then  the  passage 
cannot  be  worthy  of  serious  attention,  and  so  it  is  put 
out  of  mind,  as  that  with  which  we  have  no  practical 
concern.  But  "  iniquity  "  is  not  the  literal  rendering 
of  the  word,  it  really  means  "without  law;"  that 
what  they  advanced  as  reasons  for  being  admitted 
into  the  habitations  of  the  just  were  not  accepted 
because  they  were  not  done  lawfully,  they  had  not 
the  imprimatur  of  the  right  motive.  This  rendered 
them  counterfeit,  and  therefore  worthless.  So  that, 
to  preach  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ;  to  live  to  with- 
stand and  undo  the  "  works  of  the  devil,"  which 
bring  on  mankind  sorrow  and  sickness;  to  live  so 
unselfishly  as  to  spend  and  be  spent  for  others;  to  be 
an  energetic,  successful,  and  liberal  philanthropist;  to 
do  what  men  call  "good  works,"  is  of  no  avail,  unless 
all  is  done  from  a  right  motive. 

The  whole  question  turns  on  our  personal  know- 
ledge of  Jesus  Christ.  If  we  can  say  with  S.  Paul,  "  I 
know  Him  whom  I  have  believed,"  then  and  then 
only  shall  we  work  with  the  right  motive,  the  love  of 
personal  service  to  a  personal  Master;  without  this,  all 
else  is  sounding  brass  and  a  tinkling  cymbal — and 
whatever  may  have  been  our  experiences  here,  if  we 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  "CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE."       59 

know  not  the  Lord,  we  shall  learn  our  eternal  doom 
from  the  other  side  of  the  closed  door:  "  I  never  knew 
you,  depart  all  ye  that  work  unlawfully" — Matt, 
vii.,  23. 

What  we  have  to  examine  is,  first,  the  works  pro- 
fessed to  be  done  by  "  Christian  Scientists  ;"  and  then 
whether  the  motives  which  prompted  them  are  those 
found  described  and  illustrated  in  the  Bible. 

It  is  not  with  the  smart  pen  of  a  controversialist 
that  I  approach  this  difficult  subject,  but  I  would 
rather  ask  my  reader  to  believe  I  am  concerned  to 
state  in  the  best  form  the  "Christian  Science"  posi- 
tion, and  with  all  loving  anxiety  to  indicate  where 
the  "  unlawfulness  "  is  to  be  found;  the  "unlawful- 
ness" which  proves  the  counterfeit,  and  jeopardizes 
the  salvation  of  many  truth-seeking  souls. 

For  the  sake  of  perspicuity,  as  well  as  brevity,  I 
shall  confine  my  examination  to  the  text  book  of  the 
cult,  "Science  and  Health,  with  Key  to  the  Scrip- 
tures," by  Mary  Baker  G.  Eddy,  Boston,  edition  74. 
I  restrict  myself  to  this  work,  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses the  statement  of  the  "Science"  is  here  suffi- 
cient, and  as  I  suppose  from  the  following  passage, 
which  it  would  be  easy  to  support  by  a  hundred 
others,  this  book  is  the  admitted  and  undisputed  text 
book  of  the  Society.  In  the  October,  1895,  number  of 
the  "Christian  Science  Journal,"  published  by  "The 
Christian  Science"  Publishing  Society,  it  is  said: 

Surely  the  people  of  the  coming  centuries  will  vie  with  each 
other  in  doing  homage  to  the  Rev.  Mary  Baker  Eddy,  the 
greatest  character  since  the  advent  of  Jesus  the  Christ,  and  her 
book,  "Science  and  Health,  with  Key  to  the  Scriptures,"  will  go 
down  in  history  as  a  part  of  the  sacred  writings  of  the  ages. 


60  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

This  book  is  fondly  called  "The  Little  Book,"  in 
allusion  to  that  "  little  book "  which  the  mighty- 
angel  in  Revelations  x.,  8,  had  in  his  hand  and  gave 
to  the  Divine  Apostle  to  eat.     (Page  538.) 

For  a  statement  of  the  works  alleged  to  have  been 
done  by  ''Christian  Science"  I  quote  from  a  tract 
issued  by  the  Boston  authority.  It  exhibits  the  seal 
of  the  Society,  and  its  title  is  *' Religious  Eras;"  this 
is  the  description,  "  of  course  in  part  anticipative," 
of  the  characteristics  and  results  ''of  the  religion 
known  by  the  name  of  *  Christian  Science:'" 

Suppose  we  had  a  religion  we  were  glad  to  talk  about  whenever 
and  wherever  we  met;  that  should  become  to  us  an  all-absorbing 
theme;  that  should  so  interest  us  that,  when  we  met  together  for 
purposes  of  religious  worship,  we  should  be  so  full  of  brotherly 
love  and  good-fellowship,  so  full  of  the  fraternal  feeling  growing 
out  of  our  religious  thought  and  association,  that  we  should 
feel  loath  to  separate  at  the  conclusion  of  the  services,  and 
repair  to  our  homes.  Suppose  that,  as  the  result  of  our  religion, 
we  should  live  for  each  other  in  a  larger  sense  than  we  ever 
before  dreamed  of;  that  all  social  follies  and  frivolities  should 
become  so  distasteful  that,  as  a  mere  matter  of  choice,  we 
should  no  longer  care  to  participate  in  them. 

Suppose  that  this  religion  should  enlarge  our  mental  scope 
and  elevate  our  taste  to  one  for  a  higher  and  better  class  of 
literature;  that  it  should  bring  us  a  single  book  which,  with  the 
Bible,  should  become  so  useful  and  helpful  to  us  in  our  every- 
day life,  that  we  should  never  tire  of  reading.  Suppose  that, 
as  the  result  of  reading  this  book  and  the  Scriptures  in  the  new 
light  which  it  should  give  us,  our  natures  should  become  so 
transformed  that  we  should  lose  all  taste  for  gossip,  all  love 
for  idleness,  all  desire  for  unnecessary  display;  should  lose  so 
much  of  self,  that  the  keen  desire  to  live  only  for  money-getting 
should  pass  away,  until  we  could  and  would  honestly  say  with 
Agassiz  :  "  I  have  no  time  to  make  money." 

Suppose    the   reading   of    the    little  book    to  which   I  have 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  "CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE."       61 

referred,  should  open  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in  all  our  past 
life  we  have  been  living  almost  wholly  for  self;  that,  so  selfish 
had  we  been,  we  had  brought  misery  not  only  upon  ourselves 
but  upon  those  coming  in  contact  with  us  in  our  daily  lives. 
Suppose  it  should  open  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we  had  been 
all  our  lives  envying  our  neighbor,  coveting  his  possessions, 
and  wishing  we  could  have  as  many  good  things,  and  enjoy 
life  as  well  as  he.  Suppose  it  should  open  our  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  we  had  been  all  our  lives  slaves  to  foolish  and  hurtful  pas- 
sions and  appetites;  that  in  all  our  past  lives  we  had  been  the 
victims  of  foolish  fear — fear  of  this  thing  and  fear  of  that,  fear 
of  sickness  and  death,  fear  of  lightning  and  tempest,  fear  for 
our  own  safety  and  that  of  our  friends,  and  especially  of  our 
children.  Suppose,  as  the  result  of  understanding  this  little 
book,  we  should  awaken  to  the  fact  that  our  whole  previous  life 
had  been  one  prolonged  nightmare  of  foolish  and  unnecessary 
fear;  that  all  the  agony  we  had  suffered  in  consequence  was  the 
result  of  our  ignorance  of  what  true  life  and  true  religion  are. 

Suppose  the  little  book  should  cause  us  to  realize  that  much, 
indeed  nearly  all,  of  the  misery  and  unhappiness  we  had  suf- 
fered was  the  result  of  our  own  depraved  will;  that  a  part,  and 
very  considerable  part,  of  this  depraved  will  was  the  result  of 
a  foolish  human  pride — a  pride  as  profitless  as  silly.  Suppose 
it  should  open  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  almost  all  the  time, 
often  quite  unconsciously  to  ourselves,  as  the  result  of  this 
depraved  will,  we  had  been  in  the  habit  of  practicing  deceit; 
not  only  upon  others,  in  ways  that  seemed  harmless  to  them, 
as  well  as  in  ways  we  knew  might  or  would  injure,  but,  in  our 
blindness,  upon  ourselves — flattering  ourselves  that  we  were 
having  great  success  therein.  Suppose  that  the  little  book 
startled  us  with  the  discovery  that  we  had  actually  been  the 
victims  of  the  most  intense  hatred— hatred  of  our  neighbor, 
hatred  of  ourselves — our  own  worst  enemies;  that  it  opened 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we  had  been  so  full  of  revenge,  that 
we  had  almost  let  the  thought  of  murder  get  possession  of  us; 
that  we  actually  would  have  felt  relieved  for  the  moment  if 
some  dire  calamity  had  befallen  the  object  of  our  hatred. 

Suppose   we  should  have  this  experience;  and  then  suppose 


62  "AWAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

the  little  book  should,  after  having  laid  bare  our  faults  and 
shortcomings,  so  work  upon  us  that  these  things  would  become 
so  hideous  and  distasteful  that  we  should  of  our  own  preference 
set  about  overcoming  them;  and  further,  that  the  more  we 
strove  in  that  direction  the  happier  we  should  be,  because  our 
striving  now  actually  brought  about  results  plainly  perceptible  to 
ourselves  and  to  our  friends,  so  that  even  those  who  did  not 
believe  in  our  religion  could  but  notice  and  comment  upon  our 
improved  appearance  and  changed  character.  Suppose  that  the 
understanding  of  this  little  book  so  opened  our  eyes  to  the  truth, 
beauty,  and  grandeur  of  the  Bible,  that,  whereas  it  was  before 
an  obscure  and  almost  meaningless  fable,  it  now  became  a  great 
light  fresh  from  the  hand  of  God,  illuminating  our  heretofore 
dull  and  weary  pathway;  that,  in  consequence,  we  breathed  a 
new  atmosphere,  saw  with  new  eyes,  heard  with  new  ears, 
walked  with  new  limbs,  talked  with  a  new  tongue,  thought  new 
thoughts  with  a  mind  that  had  taken  on  a  new  vesture. 

Suppose  that,  as  the  result  of  our  understanding  the  little 
book,  we  were  brought  into  consciousness  of  a  relationship  with 
God,  of  which  we  had  never  before  been  able  to  conceive;  that 
we  realized  a  nearness  to  and  a  companionship  with  Him,  that 
seemed  utterly  beyond  our  grasp  in  the  old  conditions;  until  we 
could,  from  our  own  experience,  declare  Him  to  be,  in  truth 
and  in  fact,  Omniscience,  Omnipotence  and  Omnipresence — an 
ever-present,  practical  Help  in  time  of  actual  need.  And,  in 
addition  to  all  this,  suppose  that  we  should,  as  the  result  of 
reading  and  understanding  the  little  book,  prove  able  not  only 
to  heal  ourselves  of  sickness^  and  afterward  keep  ourselves 
free  from  attacks  of  sickness,  but  could  heal  our  friends,  and 
aid  them  in  keeping  themselves  free  from  disease.  Suppose,  as 
the  result  of  this  kind  of  a  religion,  we  were  able  to  destroy  in 
people  the  appetite  for  intoxicating  drink,  for  tobacco,  for 
gambling,  for  debauchery  of  every  kind— in  short,  for  all  kinds 
of  foolish  and  hurtful  expenditure  of  time  and  money. 

Suppose  that  these  things  could  be  accomplished  presently; 
and  that,  beyond  all  this,  we  could  see  such  mighty  possibilities 
for  the  uplifting  and  regeneration  of  the  human  race  right  here 
on  this  plane  of  existence  as  poverty  of  language  renders 
impossible  of  expression,  and   finite   sense   impossible  of  con- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF    "CHRISTIAN   SCIENCE."      63 

ception.  Suppose  this,  I  say  (and  there  are  many  other  sup- 
positions in  which  we  might  properly  indulge,  but  time  forbids), 
and  would  not  all  unite  in  claiming  this  to  be  a  true  religion, 
the  religion  that  the  world  needs:  a  religion,  indeed,  "  of  the 
people,  for  the  people,  and  by  the  people  ;"  a  fulfilling  of 
prophecy,  and,  in  fact,  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ? 

This  is,  indeed,  an  entrancing  and  magnificent 
description  of  the  "new  earth,"  and  if  only  there  was 
anything  of  a  hope  ''full  of  immortality,"  anything 
about  a  "  new  heaven,"  we,  too,  should  feel  it  "  our 
grand  privilege  and  blessed  work  to  spread  this 
precious  new  Gospel."  But  it  is  exactly  here,  where 
most  we  need,  that  we  have  no  teaching,  no  promise. 
"The  little  book  "  is  mentioned  ten  times,  and  twice 
only,  as  if  apologetically  thrown  in,  is  "  with  the 
Scriptures."  The  Word  of  God,  which  alone  has 
brought  "  life  and  immortality  "  to  mankind,  is  alto- 
gether superseded  b^'  "the  little  book."  Not  a  word 
is  said  of  Him  who  bringeth  in  righteousness,  except 
to  assert  that  this  "  Christian  Science  "  is  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  us  now  search  its  text  book,  to  learn  the  distin- 
guishing marks  of  this  Gospel,  and  see  whether  it  be 
the  Gospel  of  Christ,  which  S.  Paul  preached  ;  or  is  it 
"  another  gospel,"  and  is  it  against  the  author  of 
"  the  little  book  "  and  others  like  her  that  the  great 
Apostle  delivers  himself  so  emphatically:  "Though 
we,  or  an  angel  from  heaven,  preach  an}'  other  Gos- 
pel unto  you  than  that  we  have  preached  unto  you, 
let  him  be  accursed  "  ?  Gal.  i.,  8. 


CHAPTER   VI. 


MAN. 


AS  the  object  of  this  Gospel  is  the  ameliorating 
of  the  condition  of  man,  let  us  first  try  to  learn 
what  Mrs.  Eddy  would  have  us  believe  man  is. 

Words  in  philosophic  writing  must  have  fixed 
values.  They  are  to  the  philosopher  what  numbers 
are  to  the  mathematician;  if  they  do  not  bear  the 
same  meaning  in  the  same  book,  the  work  becomes 
as  worthless  as  if,  in  a  mathematical  treatise,  the 
symbols  3  and  5  and  7  were  used  indiscriminately. 
This  is  a  great  cause  of  indistinctness  in  Mrs. 
Eddy's  writings;  she  not  only  uses  words  to  convey 
other  meanings  than  are  commonly  current,  but  con- 
tinually the  same  word  must  have  another  meaning 
than  that  in  which  it  was  used  on  the  previous  page, 
or  the  sentence  is  inexplicable.  As  she  uses  "  man  " 
in  two  very  different  senses,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
understand  her  theory.     Page  291,  she  says  : 

When  man  is  spoken  of  as  made  in  God's  image,  it  is  not 
the  sinful  and  sickly  mortal  man  who  is  referred  to,  but  the 
ideal  man,  reflected  as  God's  likeness. 

We  immediately  suppose  that  "  man,"  then,  means 
unf alien  man,  Adam  before  he  sinned;  but  not  so,  for 
she  complains  of  some  critic  in  this  same  paragraph 


MAN.  65 

that  he  confounds  man  with  Adam.     Then  "  man,"  in 
her  use,  refers  to  an  ideal  man.     Page  491  : 

Man  is  the  family  name  for  all  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
God. 

Then,  there  are  no  sons  and  daughters  of  God  in 
reality,  but  they  exist  as  "  ideals." 

It  is  evident  that  these  blessed  beings  do  not  belong 
to  our  life,  for  on  page  198  she  says  : 

The  science  of  Being  reveals  man  as  perfect,  even  as  the 
Father  is  perfect,  because  the  soul,  or  mind  of  man,  is  God, 
the  Divine  Principle  of  his  Being,  and  the  real  man  is  governed 
by  this  soul,  instead  of  sense  ;  by  the  law  of  spirit,  and  not  of 
matter. 

It  is  quite  clear  from  this  that  "man"  here  referred 
to,  is  not  such  as  we  are,  for  we  all  eat,  and  in  this 
are  governed  by  sense,  and  if  we  did  not  eat  we 
should  not  be  here. 

Where,  then,  is  this  "man"?  Is  the  ideal  man 
inside  the  man  we  know?  It  would  appear  so.  And 
it  is  the  office  of  "  Christian  Science  "  to  draw  this 
divine  being  to  the  surface,  and  make  him  take  the 
governance  of  our  personality.     Page  426  : 

The  great  spiritual  fact  must  be  brought  out  that  man  is, 
not  shall  be,  perfect  and  immortal.  We  must  hold  forever  the 
consciousness  of  existence,  and  sooner  or  later,  aided  by 
"Christian  Science,"  we  must  master  sin,  disease,  and  death. 

This  means  to  say  that  within  a  human  being  is  a 
"man."  This  man  is,  indeed,  the  Deity  Himself. 
Page  154: 

Mortals  have  a  very  feeble  and  imperfect  idea  of  the 
spiritual  man  and  the  infinite  range  of  his  thoughts.  To  him 
belongs  eternal  life.  Never  born  and  never  dying,  it  is  an 
impossibility  for  Being,  under  the  government  of  eternal  sci- 
ence, to  fall  from  its  high  estate. 


66  "AWAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

Page  461  : 

Man  is  co-existent  with  God. 

Page  459  : 

Man  is  incapable  of  sin,  sickness,  and  death,  inasmuch  as  he 
derives  his  essence  from  God,  and  possesses  not  a  single  original 
or  underived  power.  Hence  the  real  man  cannot  depart  from 
holiness.  Nor  can  God,  by  whom  man  was  evolved,  engender 
the  capacity  or  freedom  to  sin.  A  mortal  sinner  is  not  God's 
man,  for  the  offspring  of  God  cannot  be  evil.  Mortals  are 
man's  counterfeits.  They  are  the  children  of  the  Wicked  One, 
or  the  one  evil,  which  declares  that  man  begins  as  a  material 
embryo. 

Mortals,  then,  are  evidently  men  and  women  as  we 
see  them.  They  are  counterfeits  of  the  real,  divine 
man,  who  is  somewhere  enshrouded  in  the  human 
being,  and  which  it  is  the  prerogative  of  "  Christian 
Science  "  to  bring  into  evidence.  But  how  did  the 
counterfeit  come  into  existence  ?  Mrs.  Eddy  tells  us 
that  it  is  the  child  of  the  Wicked  One.  It  will  not 
avail  her  to  immediately  obscure  her  statement  by 
defining  the  Wicked  One  to  be  "the  one  evil,"  for 
"Wicked  One"  and  "one  evil"  are  by  no  stretch  of 
imagination  the  same  thing ;  the  one  is  an  Agent, 
who  begat  the  "  Mortal,"  and  the  other  is  a  quality; 
and  a  quality  can  do  nothing.  But  we  are  not  left  to 
surmise  what  she  means,  for  we  are  plainly  told  on 
page  460  that 

Mortals  are  not  fallen  children  of  God.  They  never  had  a 
perfect  state  of  Being,  which  may  be  subsequently  regained. 
They  were,  from  the  beginning  of  mortal  history,  conceived  in 
sin  and  brought  forth  in  iniquity. 

That  is,  by  the  Wicked  One. 

Mortals  are  material  falsities.  In  the  words  of  Paul,  they  are 
"without    hope    and    without  God    in    the    world."     They    are 


MAN.  67 

errors  made  up  of  sin,  sickness,  and  death,  which  must  disap- 
pear to  give  place  to  the  facts  which  belong  to  immortal  man. 

Page  505  : 

Could  spirit   evolve  its  opposite,  matter,  and  give  ability  to 

sin  and  suffering  ? Does  Mind,  God,  enter  mat- 

te^r,  to  become  there  a  mortal  sinner,  animated  by  the  breath  of 

God? Man  represents  God;   mankind  represents 

the  Adamic  race,  and  is  a  human,  not  a  Divine  creation. 

What  Mrs.  Eddy  wants  to  prove  is  quite  clear. 
Her  idea  is  that  man  is  the  creation  of  God,  and  as 
such  a  part  of  Himself,  and  therefore  in  reality  pos- 
sessing all  that  He  is;  perfect  wholeness,  goodness, 
etc.  She  even,  compelled  by  her  theory,  asserts  that 
he  is  "  co-existent  with  God,"  that  he  is  "  never  born," 
and  is  "  never  dying,"  and  in  spite  of  her  assertion  on 
page  464,  that  "  Man  is  not  God,"  this  means  that  he 
is  "3.  partaker  of  the  Divine  nature,"  and  is  God! 

But  the  experience  of  life  exhibits  man  to  be  a 
very  different  being.  Uncivilized  human  nature  is 
the  very  antipodes  of  "goodness;"  savages  are  very 
devils;  and  all  men  are  born  and  all  men  die. 
Therefore,  to  accommodate  her  theory  to  the  facts  of 
human  life,  she  is  compelled  to  assume  the  visible 
man,  who  is  too  evidently  wicked  and  feeble  and 
dyi'^gj  to  be  not  of  "  Divine  creation."  In  the  quotations 
we  have  cited  she  ascribes  his  origin  to  two  sources, 
the  "  Wicked  One  "  and  "  human  creation."  And 
as  her  object  is  to  deal  and  deal  only  with  the  divine 
man,  there  is  nothing  left  for  her  but  to  declare  that 
man,  as  we  know  him,  is  a  phantom,  an  illusion,  and 
not  real.  She  found  support  for  this  view  in  the  fact 
that  this  "mortal  man,"  who  must  have  a  creator,  for 
it  is  out  of  the  question  for  nothing  to  make  some- 
thing,   cannot    be  brought    into   existence   by    God, 


68  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

'' good,"  "  all-good."  Therefore  his  existence  is  due 
to  one  of  the  only  two  other  agents  she  appears  to 
have  heard  of,  "The  Wicked  One"  and  "man  him- 
self." But,  as  geology  assures  us  that  this  planet 
once  was  without  life,  there  was  a  time  when  there 
was  not  such  a  being  as  "  mortal  man;"  hence  there 
is  nothing  for  it  but  to  allow  that  the  origin  of  this 
"material  falsity,"  this  "  counterfeit  of  man,"  is  the 
work  of  "  The  Wicked  One,"  and  this  marvellous 
deception  is  only  what  is  to  be  expected,  seeing  that 
"  he  is  the  father  of  lies."  The  "  mortal  man,"  that  is, 
man  as  we  see  him,  is,  then,  a  very  wonderful  con- 
struction of  deception;  he  is  a  being  who  transacts 
his  business  in  the  world,  and  apparently  does  as  he 
likes.  There  is  in  him  an  intelligence  which  regu- 
lates his  life,  but  this  very  intelligence  is  itself  mar- 
vellously adapted  to  carry  out  the  grand  deception — 
an  assumption  which  is  essential  to  the  working  of 
the  theory.  This  intelligence  is  called  "  mortal  mind." 
We  are  told  on  page  40  that  this  "  mortal  mind  " 
is  "  the  autocrat  of  the  body."  It  "  governs  every 
organ  of  the  mortal  body;"  indeed,  so  intimately  are 
the  two  connected  that  (page  70)  "mortal  mind  and 
body  are  one."  This  "mortal  mind  "  builds  its  own 
body,  which  "  from  first  to  last  is  only  a  sensuous 
belief,"  and  upon  which  (page  401)  it  is  constantly 
producing  the  results  of  false  belief;  "  this  it  accom- 
plishes through  the  five  physical  senses,"  which  (page 
170)  "are  simply  beliefs  of  mortal  mind." 

That  is,  that  whatever  appears  to  affect  us  which 
would  disturb  our  peace  or  our  comfort  is  nothing 
but  the  illusion  of  "mortal  mind"  reaching  us 
through   senses  which   it  has    purposely  devised  for 


MAN.  69 

this  shameful  deception,  and  all  we  have  to  do  is  to 
refuse  to  be  deceived;  to  roundly  assert  that  we  are 
under  delusion,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  sin, 
sickness,  and  death,  and  in  time  the  real  man  within 
us  will  shake  off  the  nightmare  that  has  seized  us, 
and  we  shall  awake  into  the  light  and  liberty  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  our  true  Father.  It  is  the  mission 
of  "  Christian  Science  "  to  work  out  for  us  this  salva- 
tion. It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  theory  has  no 
support  from  any  other  source;  that  the  common 
sense  of  mankind  derides  it,  and  the  continual  death 
and  burial  of  "  Christian  Scientists  "  declare  it  with- 
out foundation. 

But  it  is  time  to  compare  the  "  Scientists'"  theory 
with  the  statements  of  their  "  text-book,"  the  Word  of 
God,  corroborated  as  they  are  by  the  experiences  of 
humanity.  The  Wisdom  of  Solomon  ii.,  23,  24,  states 
concisely  what  the  rest  of  the  Bible  reveals:  ''God 
created  man  to  be  immortal,  and  made  him  to  be  an 
image  of  his  own  eternity.  Nevertheless,  through  the 
envy  of  the  devil  came  death  into  the  world;  and 
they  that  do  hold  of  his  side  do  find  it." 

It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  texts.  S.  Paul 
declares,  what  is  held  by  all  spiritually  enlightened 
men,  that  "  By  one  man  sin  entered  into  the  world, 
and  death  by  sin,"  Rom.  v.,  12.  The  admission  of 
sin,  which  was  the  act  of  the  unfettered  will  of  our 
first  parents,  vitiated  our  nature,  and  made  man,  not 
what  the  "  Scientists  "  declare  him  to  be,  the  offspring 
of  God,  with  his  nature  and  prerogatives,  but  of  a 
nature  similar  to  his  tempter.  Jesus  Christ  stated 
it  concisely,  "  Ye  are  of  your  father,  the  devil."  Man 
fell  from  the  condition  which  he  was  first  created  to 


70  ''A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

maintain,  and  he  became  wholly  sinful.  Any  sin 
completely  destroys  holiness.  He  once  was  pro- 
nounced by  his  Maker  to  be  ''very  good,"  but  after 
his  disobedience  that  same  Maker  declared  that 
"  every  imagination  of  the  thoughts  of  his  heart  was 
only  evil  continually,"  Gen.  vi.,  5. 

Mrs.  Eddy  is  constantly  declaring  that  as  God  is 
omnipotent  He  cannot  be  withstood  of  evil;  that,  in 
truth,  there  cannot  be  any  evil  to  withstand  Him;  and 
yet  she  asks  us  to  believe  that  "  Man,"  himself  a  very 
part  of  God,  is  enveloped  by  a  phantom  form,  the 
cunning  device  of  the  Wicked  One,  and  in  this 
"  material  falsity  "  is  caused  to  reside  all  those  delu- 
sions and  "  mortal  beliefs  "  which  make  the  passage 
of  this  life  little  else  than  a  'Vale  of  Tears.'  How 
can  this  be  credited  ?  Surely  the  Divine  Being  could 
not  be  thus  restrained,  and  especially  by  that  which, 
at  least  He  must  know,  has  no  reality. 

Not  a  few  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  followers  have  felt  the 
impossibility  of  this  assumption,  and  therefore 
"  there  was  a  division  among  them,"  which  Scrip- 
tural assertion  they  may  possibly  construe  to  give 
warrant  for  the  establishment  of  "  Centres  of  Divine 
Healing."  The  one  in  Denver,  which  was  dedicated 
by  the  Western  prophetess  of  the  "  Science,"  Mrs. 
Cramer,  of  San  Francisco,  is  out  of  harmony  with 
the  "Church  of  Christ  (Scientist)."  She  has  put  forth 
a  book,  "  Lessons  in  Science  and  Healing,"  and  has 
proved  herself  such  an  adept  at  mystic  writing  that 
she  and  her  husband  issue  the  most  credited  magazine 
of  the  cult,  "  Harmony." 

On  page  20  of  this  we  read- 

"There   is  one  God  and    Father    of  all,  Who   is  above  all, 


MAN.  71 

and  through  all,  and  in  you  all.'*— Eph.  iv.,  6.  The  limitless 
goodness  is  uncreate  Being.  This  excludes  the  possibility  of 
there  being  another  life,  substance  or  power.  There  are  no 
powers  that  are  not  good,  "for  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained 
of  God." 

A  belief  in  two  powers,  one  Good  and  the  other  Evil,  one 
warring  against  the  other,  and  a  belief  that  matter  is  life,  and 
has  powers  and  laws  that  are  opposed  to  infinite  spirit,  is  the 
division  which  causes  all  desolation.  The  belief  that  we  have 
a  lower  and  higher  nature,  one  warring  with  the  other,  or  that 
we  have  a  lower  self  and  a  higher  self,  each  striving  to  rule,  is 
a  house  divided  against  itself.  This  belief  has  brought  desola- 
tion, division  and  delusion  upon  humanity Igno- 
rance, or  the  lack  of  understanding  in  expression,  is  the  source 
of  the  erroneous  race  belief  in  two  powers,  for  this  belief  is 
judgment  rendered  on  authority  of  what  the  senses  reveal — 
intellectual  reasoning.  And  just  the  opposite  of  the  testimony 
of  the  senses  is  Divine  Truth. 

Mrs.  Cramer  is  more  cautious  than  Mrs.  Eddy. 
She  ventures  on  no  hypothesis  how  it  comes  to  pass 
that  we  have  been  invested  with  senses  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  deceiving  us;  she  is  content  to  make 
the  assertion,  and  thereafter  keep  clear  of  an  obscure 
and  disagreeable  subject. 

But  this  is  the  common  belief  of  ail  "Scientists," 
that  the  testimony  of  the  senses  is  contrary  to  the 
fact  of  divine  wholeness,  which  must  be  the  condition 
of  the  real  man;  that  it  is  only  necessary  to  shake  off 
this  delusion,  and  the  true  state  of  absolute  perfec- 
tion will  be  enjoyed.  It  is  not  worth  while  to  point 
to  the  anatomy  of  the  organs  of  sense,  and  indicate 
the  similarity  of  their  contrivances  to  the  correspond- 
ing organs  in  animals;  and  to  point  to  the  patent  fact 
that  they  serve  us  in  the  same  manner  as  they  serve 
the  animals,  who  have  no  divine   nature  to  shroud  in 


72  "  A   WAY    THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

delusion.  But,  inasmuch  as  even  ''Scientists"  admit 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Truth;  indeed,  Mrs.  Eddy 
declares  that  "the  coming  of  Christ  was  the  appear- 
ance of  Truth,"  He  was  "the  highest  human  con- 
cept of  a  perfect  man  ...  the  divine  idea  of 
God,  outside  of  the  flesh;"  then  surely  He  must  have 
been  aware  of  the  illusion  practiced  by  the  senses; 
yet  He  drops  no  hint  of  their  faithlessness.  Nay,  he 
always  appeals  to  their  evidence  in  support  of  his 
claims  :  "  Hearken  unto  Me,"  "  Handle  Me  and  see," 
"  Lift  up  your  eyes  and  behold." 

The    Lord  Jesus  cannot    be   cited    as    a  favorable 
witness  in  support  of  the  "  Scientists'  "  theory. 

It  would   be   impossible  for  this    compound    man 
to  remain  under  closest  inspection  all  these  centuries, 
and  yet  not  exhibit  some  sign  of  the  strange  duality. 
Now,   when   such  an   intensely   interesting  and    bold 
biological    theory    is    broached,    its    only    chance    of 
serious  examination  by  the  intelligent  world  would 
be  to  support  it  by  an  array  of  accurate  observations. 
The  prodigious  accumulation    of   accurate    obser- 
vation   is    a    large    part   of    the    claim    for    respect 
which  Mr.  Darwin   makes  of   his   fellow-man.     What 
claim    has    Mrs.    Eddy   upon    our  serious    attention? 
She   not  only  cites  no   proofs   of  any  kind,   but  she 
reveals   to   us    her  total    incapacity   for  observation. 
It  would  be,  indeed,  inexplicable  that  people  incapa- 
ble of  thinking,  and  uneducated,  should  give  any  heed 
to  her  statements,  but  that   intelligent  crowds,  who 
have  had    the    benefit  of    the    public  school    educa- 
tion,  should   listen    to    "readers,"    properly    accred- 
ited  and  salaried,  for  the  very  purpose  of    reading 
"  the  little  book,"  is  as  strange  a  vagary  of  human 


MAN.  73 

nature  as  the  history  of  it  has  ever  produced.  To 
judge  of  the  calibre  of  Mrs.  Eddy's  mind,  and  her 
real  capability  for  observation,  read  this  astonishing 
paragraph  on  page  537  : 

It  is  related  that  a  father,  anxious  to  try  this  experiment, 
plunged  his  infant  babe,  only  a  few  hours  old,  into  water  for 
several  minutes,  and  repeated  this  operation  daily,  until  the 
child  could  remain  under  water  twenty  minutes,  moving  and 
playing  without  harm,  like  a  fish.  Parents  should  remember 
this,  and  so  learn  to  develop  their  children  properly  on  dry 
land! 

Let  any  one  hold  their  breath  even  for  07ie  minute, 
and  they  can  estimate  the  value  of  the  rest  of  Mrs. 
Eddy's  assertions. 

All  the  children  of  Adam  were  born  outside  Para- 
dise. We  are  particularly  told  that  when  in  this  con- 
dition "Adam  begat  a  son  after  his  own  likeness  and 
in  his  own  image,"  Gen.  v.,  3.  The  descending  course 
of  human  life  has  shown  no  signs  of  its  returning 
to  its  pristine  purity.  David  said  exactly  what  the 
history  tells  us  of  the  near  descendants  of  Adam: 
"Behold,  I  was  shapen  in  iniquity,  and  in  sin  did  my 
mother  conceive  me,"  Psalm  li.,  5.  And  another 
thousand  years  of  human  experience  have  shown  no 
improvement  whatever.  S.  Paul  stated  his  observa- 
tion, "All  have  sinned  and  come  short  of  the  glory 
of  God,"  Rom.  iii.,  23;  which  is  practically  the  same 
language  as  David  used:  ''They  are  all  gone  aside; 
they  are  altogether  become  filthy;  there  is  none  that 
doeth  good;  no,  not  one,"  Psalm  xiv.,  3. 

If  any  one  thinks  that  the  race  shows  to-day  any 
tendency  to  betterment,  let  him  gain  an  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  lives,  say,  of  the  Chinese,  a  people 
of    an    ancient   civilization,    and    with   a   systern    of 


74  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

education  such  as  the  world  has  never  seen,  by 
which  every  post  of  Government,  from  the  lowest 
official  to  the  Taoti  of  a  Province,  can  only  be  had  by 
public  examination.  S.  Paul's  description  of  the 
heathen  world,  as  he  knew  it,  is  the  description  of 
the  heathen  world  to-day,  where  it  has  not  been 
influenced  by  an  atmosphere  of  public  opinion 
cleared  by  the  morals  of  Christianity.  Read  the 
latter  half  of  the  first  chapter  of  his  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  weigh  the  actual  meaning  of  each  sentence, 
and  it  is  a  fearful  indictment  — "  they  have  altogether 
become  filthy  "! 

It  was  to  this  world,  "  lying  in  wickedness,"  that 
God  came  as  a  Saviour.  And  what  is  the  plan  of  his 
salvation  ?  Not  the  development  of  the  Divine  germ, 
smothered  and  overborne  by  an  accumulation  of 
"  fleshly  lust ;  "  not  the  liberation  of  "  the  true  man  " 
from  the  grasp  of  his  false  double  ;  not  the  en- 
lightening of  ''the  spiritual  consciousness"  of  the 
real  man,  by  the  revelations  vouchsafed  to  Mrs.  Eddy, 
that  he  may  fling  off  the  trammels  of  "  mortal  mind," 
and  rise  from  the  charnel  house  of  "sin,  sickness  and 
death,"  to  walk  in  the  liberty  wherewith  "  Christian 
Science  "  hath  made  him  free.  To  preach  this  were 
"  another  gospel."  The  gospel  of  the  grace  of  God 
is  the  narration  of  the  Incarnation,  the  death  and  the 
resurrection  of  the  second  Person  of  the  Blessed 
Trinity,  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  the  assertion  of  the 
mode  of  production  of  a  new  kind  of  vitality.  It  is 
the  statement  of  the  process,  as  seen  from  a  human 
point  of  view,  of  the  modification  of  the  divine  life 
so  that  it  could  express  itself  through  a  body  of  this 
flesh.     It  is  the  solution  of  the  problem  how  to  make 


MAN.  75 

the  material  and   immaterial  worlds  sentient  of  each 
other. 

The  Lord  Jesus  Christ  took  down  the  middle  wall 
of  partition,  and  in  Him  the  two  worlds  joined. 
He  was  "the  Son  of  Man  "  who  is  in  heaven.  Just 
as  He  could  say  to  Philip,  '^  He  that  hath  seen  Me 
hath  seen  the  Father,"  so  he  could  say  to  the 
Intelligences  of  the  Unseen  World,  "  He  that  hath 
seen  Me  hath  seen  humanity."  This  is  not  a  sup- 
position, but  it  is  the  central  truth  of  the  Bible, 
which  is  called  *' the  Book  of  this  life."  The  last 
of  the  inspired  writers  states  the  purport  of  the 
whole  compilation:  "This  is  the  record,  that  God 
hath  given  us  eternal  life,  and  this  life  is  in  His 
Son.  He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  life,  and  he  that 
hath   not  the   Son  of  God  hath  not  life." 

Now,  it  would  be  a  thankless  boon  to  bestow 
upon  us  as  "  a  gift "  that  which  we  already  pos- 
sessed. If  we  had  in  us  "eternal  life,"  why  cause 
the  inexpressible  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God  to 
provide  it  for  us  ?  Nothing  is  clearer  in  the  Word 
of  God,  that  "we  have  no  life  in  us;"  that  we  are 
"  dead  in  trespasses  and  sins ; "  our  English  pre- 
position "in"  is  a  very  feeble  representative  of  its 
Greek  parent;  in  its  original  is  included  the  agency 
by  which  the  condition  was  acquired;  it  is  "the 
trespasses  and  sins"  which  keep  us  "dead."  In  this 
state  "life  "  is  presented  to  us  ;  that  will,  which  our 
first  parents  used  to  do  the  deed  of  disobedience, 
has  still  the  same  liberty,  and  can  accept  this  gift 
of  eternal  life  if  it  so  wills.  Therefore,  our  Lord 
stood  in  the  midst  of  the  human  procession  and 
cried:  ''Ye  will  not  to  come  unto  Me,  that  ye  might 


76  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

have  life,"  John  v.,  40,  As  might  be  expected, 
when  this  life  was  accepted  by  anyone,  then  the  only 
word  we  have  to  express  the  inheritance  of  life 
comes  to  be  used  —  he  is  said  to  be  "  born  from 
above,"  John  iii.,  3.  Or,  to  use  S.  Paul's  words, 
"And  you,  who  were  dead,  hath  He  quickened," 
Ephes.  ii.,  i.  It  is  a  question  of  the  impartation 
of  life,  a  new  vitality.  S.  Paul,  describing  one 
who  has  received  it,  declares  him  to  be  "  a  new 
creation,"  a  totally  new  being,  vitalized  with 
another  kind  of  life.  The  Apostle  asserts:  *'  The 
life  I  now  live  in  the  flesh,  I  live  by  the  faith  of 
the  Son  of  God;  and  when  Christ,  who  is  my  life, 
shall  appear,  then  shall  I  also  appear  with  Him  in 
glory,"  Gal.  ii.,  20. 

This  life  carries  with  it  the  marks  of  any  other 
vitality.  It  has  a  character  of  its  own,  from  which 
it  never  deviates.  This  character  was  most  thor- 
oughly displayed  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  But  the 
instant  it  finds  lodgment  in  any  heart,  it  there  and 
then  begins  to  produce  a  character  more  and  more 
approaching  His,  as  the  life  more  and  more  gains 
command  of  the  man.  This  is  a  very  singular 
biological  fact,  and  one  which  has  not  received  the 
attention  it  deserves.  It  matters  not  who  may  be 
the  subject  of  its  influence,  learned  or  unlearned, 
young  or  old,  civilized  or  savage,  the  Esquimo  of 
the  Arctic  zone  or  the  negro  of  the  tropics;  at  once 
is  exhibited,  despite  the  varied  conditions  of  race, 
temperament,  tradition  or  environment,  the  self-same 
character,  whose  elements  are  "  love,  joy,  peace,  long- 
suffering,  gentleness,  goodness,  faith,  disinterested- 
ness,  temperance."     This  is  so  real  and  so  certain, 


MAN.  77 

that  S.  Paul   points  to  that  other  mark  of  true  life, 
the    determination    to    reproduce    its    original,    and 
accounts  for  the  invariable  exhibition  of  these  traits 
of  character  by  saying  that  "Christ  is  formed  in  us." 
This   is  the  declaration  of    "the  text  book"  of  the 
"  Christian   Scientists,"   and   it   is   as   far  from   what 
they  profess   to   have   found   in    it  as  well-nigh   can 
be    imagined.      Any  one  of    the   quotations  already 
cited  is  quite  sufficient  to  discredit  their  impossible 
theory.      But  if  any  one  has  any  lingering  doubt,  let 
him   consider  the  meaning  of  the  words  of  S.  John 
i.,  II,  etc.     The  Divine  Apostle  says  that  his  Master 
was  that  "life"  which  was  the  "light"  of  men;  that 
"  He   came  to   His  own,   and  His  own  received  Him 
not;  but  as  many  as  received  Him,  to  them  gave  He 
authority  to  be  called  sons  of  God,  even  to  them  that 
believe   in  His  name;"    that  is,   that  when  He,  the 
life,  found  entrance  to  an  open  heart,  that  being,  by 
virtue  of  the  life,  became  united  in  living  union  with 
the  origin  of  that  life,  and   therefore  had  the  right, 
the  authority,  to  be  classed   as  a  son  of  God.     And 
this   marvellous  condition  was   not  acquired  by  any 
possible   human   effort;    it   was   not    a    development 
of   that  which  was  already  in  human  nature;  it  could 
not    be    come    by,    by   any    process    of    training    in 
"science,"  or  any  other  mode  of   initiation;    but   it 
was  wholly  a  gracious  gift  of   God.      "  Which  were 
born  not  of  blood;"  we  did  not   inherit  this  Christ- 
life  from  our  parents;  "nor   of  the  will   of  flesh;" 
this   is  by  no  means  a   repetition   of   what   has   just 
been  stated;  but  "of  flesh,"  without  the  article,  was 
the  Jewish  mode  of  referring  to  circumcision,  and  all 
the  ceremonial  which  followed  upon  it.    The  Apostle 


78  "A   WAY  THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

tells  us  that  this  "  Divine  se^d  "  is  not  got  by  any 
ceremonial,  or  sacrament,  or  church  privilege;  **  nor 
of  the  will  of  man  ;  "  no  human  effort  or  device  v^ill 
cause  a  soul  thus  to  be  born  into  the  family  of  God; 
there  is  one,  and  only  one  way;  it  is  the  soul  itself 
opening  to  receive  Jesus  Christ,  it  is  thus  "of  God." 
"  Behold,  I  stand  at  the  door  and  knock,  and  if  any 
man  open  the  door,  we  will  come  in  to  him  and  sup 
with  him." 

This  is  the  natural  history  of  redeemed  man  as 
given  in  the  Bible,  and  it  bears  no  likeness  whatever 
to  that  taught  by  "  Scientists." 

"  I  speak  to  wise   men,  judge  ye  what   I  say." 


CHAPTER    VII. 

THE     HOLY     GHOST, 

WE  must  bear  in  mind  that  ''  Christian  Science  " 
and  its  relatives  profess  not  only  to  take  the 
Bible  for  their  text  book,  but  that  its  deep  and  spirit- 
ual meaning  is  revealed  to  them  in  fuller  measure 
than  to  those  who  study  it  in  the  usual  way. 

Everyone  who  is  led  by  the  Spirit  of  God  naturally 
has  a  delight  in  seeking  the  Mind  of  God  as  revealed 
in  His  Word.  The  experiences  of  Bible  students  is 
uniform,  that  "spiritual  things  are  spiritually  re- 
vealed;" that  it  is  not  to  mere  human  intelligence 
and  persistent  study  that  the  Bible  yields  up  its 
precious  treasures,  but  it  is  by  the  illumination  of 
the  Spirit  that  the  sacred  page  becomes  perspicuous, 
and  what  to  the  ordinary  reader  is  an  intellectual 
reception,  to  the  true  child  of  God  becomes  "  a  living 
word  ; "  and  at  once  acknowledgment  is  made  that 
"The  entrance  of  Thy  Word  giveth  light."  Of  this 
prominent  peculiarity  of  the  true  Christian  the 
"  Christian  Scientist"  is  provided  with  a  close  coun- 
terfeit. This  it  is  which  most  deceives  the  religiously 
inclined,  the  mere  formal  Christian,  as  it  is  shown 
that  the  study  of  the  Bible  is  the  ardent  practice 
of  "  Scientists."  To  the  unwary  this  appears  a  sure 
sign  that  "the  thing  is  of  God."  But  it  is  a  coun- 
terfeit sign. 


80  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

The  Baconian  figment  of  the  authorship  of  Shakes- 
peare lately  had  a  transient  passage  over  the  literary 
sky.  Had  anyone  seen  Mr.  Ignatius  Donnelly  and  his 
co-believers  diligently  conning  their  Shakespeares, 
it  would  have  been  a  fair  deduction  that  they  were 
devoted  students  of  the  great  poet.  But  they  were 
not.  What  attracted  them  was  only  to  search  for 
apparent  proofs  of  the  novel  theory  which  they  had 
adopted.  So  it  is  with  "  Scientists "  ;  they  do  not 
study  the  Bible  humbly  and  reverently  to  learn, 
"What  will  the  Lord  say  to  me?"  but  to  find  sup- 
port for  the  vagaries  of  their  "  Science  of  Being," 
and  to  twist  the  English  translation  of  a  Greek  book 
to  fit  the  crannies  and  turns  of  their  desultory,  tor- 
tuous theory. 

If  they  declare  the  Bible  to  be  their  "  text  book," 
and  if  they  are  ever  ready  to  cite  from  its  pages 
what  they  think  is  in  their  favor,  they  cannot  object 
to  honestly  measuring  their  tenets  by  its  express 
statements.  There  is  scarcely  any  more  vital  revela- 
tion to  us,  living  in  this  Dispensation,  than  the  posi- 
tion occupied  by  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  present 
governance  of  the  Church.  When  Jesus  was  glori- 
fied, the  Holy  Spirit,  "  the  other  advocate,"  descended 
to  undertake  the  personal  direction  of  the  Church. 
So  persistently  is  He  referred  to  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  that  that  book  might  well  be  called  ''The 
Acts  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  He  came  with  irresistible 
power  on  the  day  of  Pentecost,  and  remained  on 
earth.  The  Apostles  continued  in  Jerusalem,  a  col- 
lege, for  twenty  years,  bearing  witness,  in  the  only 
place  on  earth  where  their  witness  could  be  refuted, 
to   the    Resurrection.       S.   Peter  well   knew  the    im- 


THE    HOLY   GHOST.  81 

mense  necessity  of  this  institution.  He  said  to  the 
Sanhedrim:  "And  we  are  his  witnesses  of  these 
things;  and  so  also  is  the  Holy  Ghost,"  Acts  v.,  32. 
When  they  sat  in  council  it  is  almost  as  if  the  King- 
dom of  God  were  at  length  "  set  up  "  on  earth,  and 
the  royal  throne  in  the  council  chamber  possessed 
in  actual  sight  the  August  Majesty.  The  very  first 
edict  they  issued,  which  was  to  lay  to  rest  the  burn- 
ing question  of  the  time,  whether  the  Gentile  converts 
should  first  become  Jews  before  they  could  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  Church  of  Christ,  begins:  "  It  seemed 
good  to  the  Holy  Ghost  and  to  us,"  Acts  xv.,  28. 
They  do  not  appear  to  deem  any  preface  or  explana- 
tion necessary;  but,  as  if  it  were  natural  and  well 
understood,  they  count  the  Holy  Ghost  as  one  of 
their  number. 

Throughout   the  whole   book   He  is   ever   present 
in  distinct    personality.     It  was    to   the   Holy    Ghost 
Ananias  and   Sapphira  lied;  it  was  the  Holy  Ghost 
who  spoke  by  the  Apostles;  it  was  the  Holy  Ghost 
the  persecutors  of  Stephen  resisted;  it  was  that  the 
men  on  whom   Simon   Magus   should  lay  his  hands 
might  receive  the  Holy  Ghost  that  he  offered  Peter 
money;  it  was  the   Holy  Ghost  who  sent  Philip  to 
join    himself    to    the  Ethiopian  Eunuch;    it  was  the 
Holy   Ghost   who   "caught   away   Philip"  after  his 
mission   was  fulfilled;   it  was  the  Holy  Ghost  who 
sent  Peter  to  the  Roman,  Cornelius;  it  was  the  Holy 
Ghost  who  said,  "  Separate  me  Barnabas  and  Saul 
for  the  work  whereunto  I  have  called  them  ;"  it  was 
the   Holy   Ghost  who  forbade  them   to   preach    the 
Word  in  Asia;  it  was  the  Holy  Ghost  who  suffered 
them  not  to  go  into  Bithynia;  it  was  the  Holy  Ghost 


82  "A   WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

who,  S.  Paul  declared  to  the  Ephesian  Elders,  had 
made  them  overseers  of  the  flock;  and  the  whole 
narrative  is  full  of  the  receiving  of  the  gifts  of  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

That  constant  students  of  the  Bible  should  fail  to 
note  the  fact  that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  the  Divine 
operator  in  that  age,  of  which  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  is  the  first  historical  page,  and  in  which 
we  are  at  present  living,  seems  incredible.  And 
when  we  learn  that,  as  at  the  first  creation,  He  it 
was  who  imparted  life  to  this  lifeless  planet,  so  He 
presides  over  the  birth  of  the  new  man,  and  the 
second  creation  is  due  to  his  life-giving  energy; 
when  we  know  that  the  whole  initiative  of  salvation 
rests  with  Him,  and  that  our  eternal  safety  wholly 
depends  upon  the  possession  or  the  non-possession 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  then  it  is  strangely  ominous  that 
"  Scientists  "  discard  His  personality  and  reduce  His 
mighty  agency  to  the  intangibility  of  a  "  develop- 
ment of  eternal  life.  Truth  and  Love,"  page  567. 

This  is  so  serious  a  charge  that  it  becomes  us  to 
examine  carefully  what  this  "Science"  does  hold 
concerning  the  Holy  Ghost. 

In  the  Bible,  Holy  Ghost  and  Spirit  are  synony- 
mous terms,  but  not  so  in  "Divine  Science."  "Spirit" 
is  defined,  page  573,  as: 

Divine  substance;  mind;  principle;  all  that  is  good;  God; 
that  only  which  is  perfect,  infinite,  everlasting;  omnipresent 
and  omnipotent. 

On  page  230  we  are  told  "  Soul  and  Spirit  are  one." 
Whatever,  therefore,  may  be  meant  by  "Spirit,"  and 
it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  Mrs.  Eddy  does  mean,  she 
certainly  does  not  intend  us  to  understand  that  when 


THE  HOLY   GHOST.  83 

the  word  Spirit  is  used,  the  Holy  Ghost  of  the  Bible 
is  meant. 

Holy  Ghost  she  defines  on  page  567  to  be  "Divine 
Science  ;  the  developments  of  eternal  life,  Truth  and 
Love." 

In  recounting  the  salient  features  of  our  Lord's  life 
in  the  light  of  "Divine  Science,"  on  page  351,  she 
thus  proceeds  : 

His  students  then  received  the  Holy  Ghost.  By  this  is 
meant,  that  by  all  they  had  witnessed  and  suffered  they  were 
roused    to     an     enlarged    understanding    of    Divine   Science. 

.  .  .  .  They  no  longer  measured  man  by  material  sense. 
After  gaining  a  true  idea  of  their  glorified  Master  they  became 
better  healers,  leanirg  no  longer  on  a  leader,  but  on  the  Divine 
principle  of  their  work.  The  influx  of  light  was  sudden.  It 
■was  sometimes  in  overwhelming  power,  as  on  the  day  of  Pente- 
cost. 

Page  348  : 

Hitherto  they  only  believed;  now  they  understood.  This 
understanding  Is  what  is  meant  by  the  descent  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  that  influx  of  Divine  Science  which  so  illuminated  the 
Pentecostal  days,  and  is  now  repeating  its  ancient  history. 

On  page  255  is  given  the  platform  of  "  Christian 
Science."     Article  X.  is  : 

The  Holy  Ghost,  or  Spirit,  reveals  this  triune  Principle,  and 
is  expressed  in  Divine  Science,  which  is  the  Comforter,  leading 
into  all  truth,  and  revealing  the  Divine  principle  of  the  universe — 
universal  and  perpetual  harmony. 

It  might  be  thought  from  the  first  of  these  quota- 
tions that  Mrs.  Eddy  uses  "  Divine  Science  "  as  another 
appellation  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  but  we  are  precluded 
from  accepting  this  by  the  statement  on  page  17  that 

the  re-discovery  of  this  Divine  Science  of  mind-healing, 
through  a  spiritual  sense  of  the  Scriptures  and  through  the 
teachings  of  the  Comforter,  as  promised  by  the  Master, 


84  "  A  WAY  THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

is  one  of  the  two  parts  of  the  revelation  vouchsafed 
to  Mrs.  Eddy: 

When  standing  within  the  shadow  of  the  Death  Valley,  I 
learned  these  truths  in  Divine  Science. 

If  some  of  these  expressions  seem  to  recognize  the 
personality  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  this  cannot  be  of 
deliberate  purpose,  and  must  be  ascribed  to  a  lapsus 
calami,  in  the  presence  of  such  repeated  expressions  as 
"the  facts  of  Divine  Science,"  "  the  mirror.  Divine 
Science,"  "  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  Divine  Science." 

There  are  only  two  other  references,  if  the  index 
be  complete,  to  the  Holy  Ghost.  In  one,  page  364, 
"the  chambers  of  disease"  appear  to  be  called  "The 
temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,"  and   the  other  is  (page 

334): 

The  Holy  Ghost,  or  Divine  Spirit,  overshadowed  the  pure 
sense  of  the  Virgin-Mother  with  the  full  recognition  that  Being 
is  Spirit. 

What  would  be  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  the 
Epistles,  if  from  them  were  eliminated  all  mention  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  ?  But  "  Science  and  Health,  with 
Key  to  the  Scriptures,"  would  be  very  much  benefited 
if  the  seven  indistinct  and  uncertain  allusions  to  Him 
were  left  out. 

The  conclusion  is  inevitably  forced  upon  us,  that 
this  system  of  "Christian  Science"  has  no  place  for 
the  work  of  the  Holy  Ghost;  and  as  He  alone  is  the 
"Lord  and  Life-Giver,"  as  without  Him  there  can 
be  no  life  unto  God,  no  birth  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Christ,  no  process  of  sanctification,  and  no  final  holi- 
ness, "without  which  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord,"  the 
relation  between  "  Christian  Science  "  and  Christian- 
ity seems  but  nominal. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


SPIRIT. 


IF  Mrs.  Eddy  had  written  with  even  any  attempt  at 
exactness,  her  book  and  her  '  science  '  would  never 
have  had  the  success  they  have.  A  perusal  of  the 
pages  of  this  remarkable  book  will  reveal  to  the  per- 
son of  ordinary  intelligence  that  that  quality  of  the 
mind  which  is  called  'thought  '  is  here  so  persistently 
defied,  that  at  length  it  retires  from  endeavoring  to 
understand  what  the  authoress  means,  and  in  that 
bewilderment  which  then  ensues,  the  mind  surren- 
ders itself  to  that  very  condition  which  is  essential 
for  the  operation  of  '  suggestion  '  to  work  upon  the 
disordered  body. 

I  found  that  Mrs.  Eddy's  book  was  the  best  mode 
of  inducing  the  mesmeric  sleep  I  had  ever  experi- 
enced. The  repetition  of  senseless  sentences,  with 
constantly  changing  signification  of  words,  whose 
new  meanings  had  to  be  gleaned  from  the  context; 
this  long  string  of  synonyms:  Principle;  Mind;  Soul; 
Spirit;  Life;  Truth;  Love;  Substance;  Intelligence; 
are  all  synonyms  for  God,  and  their  interchange  in 
sentences  produced  a  strange  maze,  which  made  the 
mind  dazed,  and  it  took  on  the  mesmeric  condition. 
When  in  this  state,  the  'subjective'  mind  was  lib- 
erated to  follow  '  suggestion.'     Of  course  this  process 


86  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

will  only  be  effective  with  certain  people.  Those  who 
decline  to  read  unless  they  understand,  declare  the 
book  to  be  rubbish,  and  throw  it  aside;  but  those 
who  are  not  particular  about  fathoming  what  they 
read,  accept  what  Mrs.  Eddy  has  written,  yield  them- 
selves to  the  misty  labyrinth  of  her  sentences,  become 
mentally  dizzy,  though  they  do  not  recognize  it — 
mesmerized,  in  fact.  It  is  a  condition  not  unallied 
to  intoxication,  and  is  as  enthralling  and  attractive. 

Not  long  ago  I  heard  that  a  young  professional 
man  of  great  promise,  who  was,  and  indeed  is,  af- 
flicted with  such  nervousness  that  he  is  unable  to 
control  his  muscular  movements,  was  attending  the 
"  Church  of  Christ  "  (Scientist).  I  asked  him  if  he 
had  accepted  the  theories  there  propounded.  He  re- 
plied, smiling,  "  Well,  no;  but  you  know  how  nervous 
I  am,  and  I  find  going  there  mesmerizes  me,  and  I 
sit  quiet." 

In  thus  writing,  I  am  not  making  unwarrantable 
aspersions  on  Mrs.  Eddy's  indiscriminate  use  of 
words,  and  the  playfulness  with  which  she  treats 
their  etymology.  I  quote  from  page  233,  a  plank  from 
her  *  platform : ' 

The  word  Adam  is  from  the  Hebrew  Adamah,  signifying  the 
red  color  of  the  groimd,  dust,  nothingness.  Divide  the  name 
Adam  into  two  syllables  and  it  reads  a  dam,  or  obstruction. 
This  suggests  the  thought  of  something  fluid,  of  mortal  mind 
in  solution,  of  the  darkness  which  seemed  to  appear  when 
"  darkness  was  upon  the  face  of  the  deep,"  and  matter  stood  as 
opposed  to  spirit,  as  that  which  is  accursed. 

Despite  the  fact  that  lucidity  would  render  inopera- 
tive the  whole  system,  there  must  be  some  people 
among  the  200,000  'Scientists'  who  believe  that  Mrs. 


SPIRIT.  87 

Eddy's  terms  are  to  be  seriously  taken,  and  that 
definite  meanings  are  to  be  ascribed  to  her  phrases. 

We  now  reach  the  keynote  of  the  "  Science,"  Spirit. 
It  will  be  well  to  remind  ourselv^es  that  there  are 
certain  ideas  which  the  human  mind  is  not  con- 
structed to  entertain.  Infinity,  for  instance.  No 
number  can  be  conceived  to  which  it  is  not  possible 
to  add  a  unit;  no  space  can  be  thought  of  to  which 
an  extension  cannot  be  imagined.  Spirit,  too,  lies 
beyond  the  grasp  of  the  human  mind.  We  are  so 
familiar  with  the  word,  that  we  have  come  to  believe 
we  have  a  conception  of  Spirit;  but  let  the  attempt  be 
made  to  form  a  mental  picture  of  Spirit,  and  it  will 
be  found  impossible.  We  receive  all  our  ideas  from 
sensation  and  reflection;  but  as  we  have  no  sensa- 
tion of  Spirit,  the  mind  is  not  supplied  with  the 
elements  from  which  to  construct  its  idea. 

The  body  has  been  under  our  closest  scrutiny  for 
these  six  thousand  years,  and  as  yet  scientific  obser- 
vation has  not  been  able  to  note  any  single  fact  about 
"  life,"  the  spiritual  power  which  drives  the  marvellous 
mechanism.  The  complete  seclusion  in  which  this 
spiritual  force  secretes  itself  is  the  more  remarkable 
when  we  consider  its  wonderful  strength;  the  human 
heart  is  worked  by  it  with  a  force  which  could  lift 
25  foot-tons  in  twenty-four  hours.  Few  people  com- 
prehend the  terrific  energy  of  this  unseen  occupier  of 
the  human  frame.  When  we  consider  this,  and  re- 
member that  the  governor  of  this  seething  corpora- 
tion has  never  been  brought  forth  to  view,  although 
he  has  been  unweariedly  sought  for,  it  ought  to  make 
us  cautious  in  our  use  of  the  word  Spirit. 

Matter  would    seem    to  be  the    bete   noire    of  the 


88  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

'scientists.'  Mrs.  Eddy  views  matter  as  not  only  the 
opposite  of  Spirit,  but  its  determined  antagonist. 
She  is  unable  to  see  how  the  Creator,  himself  Spirit, 
can  ever  have  brought  into  existence  so  unspiritual 
a  thing  as  matter.  But  what  is  impossible  to  Mrs. 
Eddy  and  her  following  may  not  be  so  difficult  to 
minds  otherwise  educated.     On  page  174  she  writes: 

Is  Spirit  the  source  or  creator  of  matter?  Science  reveals 
nothing  in  Spirit  out  of  which  to  create  matter. 

Science  destroys  matter.  Spirit  is  the  only  substance  and 
consciousness  recognized  by  Science. 

The  senses  oppose  this,  but  there  are  no  material  senses,  for 
matter  has  no  sensation.  To  Science  there  is  no  matter,  even 
as  to  truth  there  is  no  error,  and  to  good  no  evil. 

It  is  a  false  supposition,  the  notion  that  there  is  real  substance- 
matter,  the  opposite  of  Spirit.  Spirit  is  God,  and  God  is  all; 
hence  He  can  have  no  opposite. 

This  last  sentence  contains  the  central  falsity  upon 
which  pivots  the  whole  theory  of  "  Christian  Science:" 
"Spirit  is  God,  and  God  is  all;  therefore  all  is  Spirit." 
"  Spirit  is  God "  may  be  true,  if,  to  adopt  the  lan- 
guage of  theological  science,  the  substance  of  the 
Deity  is  Spirit.  Our  Lord  said  to  the  woman  at  the 
well,  in  order  to  impress  upon  her  that  materialism 
was  not  the  great  question,  for  all  her  religion  was  a 
matter  of  facts  and  forms,  that  "  God  is  Spirit,"  not  a 
Spirit.  But  to  say  that  whatever  being  is  composed 
of  spirit  is  God,  is  not  true  ;  for  there  are  evil  intelli- 
gences w^ho  are  of  spirit,  and  vast  orders  of  life  which 
people  the  unseen  world.  So  that  what  we  ought  to 
say  is.  Some  Spirit  is  God. 

Then,  again,  to  say  "  God  is  all^"  is  not  true.  Our 
Lord,  only  to  refer  to  one  of  his  assertions,  said  to 
those  who  resisted  Him,  "Ye  are  of  your  father,  the 


SPIRIT.  89 

devil;"  and  even  if  the  "  Scientists  "  vi^ill  not  allow  the 
existence  of  the  devil,  there  are  many  men  who  have 
not  a  spark  of  goodness  in  them.  "  God  is  not  in  all 
their  thoughts."  These  inhabit  that  land  of  Nod, 
where  Cain  and  his  following  live  in  forgetfulness  of 
God,  and  are  "without  God"  in  their  world.  So 
God  is  not  all. 

The  "  Scientists  "  seem  to  forget  that  the  very  neces- 
sity of  Love  is,  that  it  shall  have  some  being  on 
whom  to  rest  its  affections.  That  God,  being  Love, 
was  compelled  to  people  the  universe  with  personali- 
ties, whom  He  might  love.  Such  personalities  must 
have  freedom  of  choice.  If  a  being  is  compelled  to 
act  according  to  the  mind  of  another,  and  has  no  mind 
of  his  own,  he  is  an  automaton,  and  not  worth  loving. 
Such  personalities  God  did  create,  and  we  are  speci- 
mens of  them;  we  certainly  have  freedom  of  choice; 
we  can  obey  or  disobey  God.  So  that  the  favorite 
assertion  of  "  Scientists  "  is  not  true,  God  is  not  all. 

When  He  will  say,  and  is  saying,  "  Depart  from  Me 
ye  cursed  into  everlasting  fire  prepared  for  the  devil 
and  his  angels,"  He  declares  that  there  are  beings  in 
existence  with  whom  He  has  no  part,  and  in  whom 
He  does  not  and  cannot  reside.  God  is  Spirit,  but 
God  is  not  all.  Whether  what  is  not  God  can  be 
asserted  to  be  Spirit  or  not,  we  cannot  say.  Mrs. 
Eddy,  however,  is  less  cautious.  On  page  230  she 
affirms:  "God  never  created  matter,  for  there  is 
nothing  in  Spirit  out  of  which  matter  could  be  made." 
This  entirely  depends  upon  what  Spirit  is,  and  what 
are  its  qualities  and  capabilities. 

Suppose  we  allow  that  Spirit  is  substance.  When 
Mrs.  Eddy  says,  page  230,  that  "  Spirit  is  the  only 


90  "A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

substance,"  she  probably  expresses  a  greater  truth 
than  she  at  all  imagines;  indeed,  the  next  words  show 
she  has  not  an  inkling  of  the  possible  truth  of  her 
assertion  that  "  Spirit  is  the  only  substance,  the  in- 
visible and  indivisible  God." 

To  be  able  to  at  all  think  clearly  upon  this  occult 
subject  we  must  be  careful  to  discriminate  between 
Spirit  and  Life.  When  we  say  Spirit  is  substance,  we 
mean  that  it  is  an  existence  which  lends  itself  to  the 
offices  of  Life.  Substance  is  that  which  "  stands 
under"  and  gives  support  to  something  else.  We 
may  even  say  that  Spirit  is  to  a  spiritual  being  what 
flesh  is  to  a  human  being.  This,  indeed,  S.  Paul 
distinctly  says:  "  There  is  a  natural  body  and  there 
is  a  spiritual  body,"  I.  Cor.  xv.,  44;  but  the  word  he 
used  for  "  natural  "  would  be  literally  rendered  by 
"  soulical,"  if  there  was  such  a  word;  that  is,  a  body 
of  which  the  soul  is  the  vitality,  the  animal  body. 
So  the  life,  when  it  is  a  denizen  of  an  immaterial  or 
spiritual  world,  needs  some  substance  of  which  to 
construct  a  body  wherein  and  whereby  it  may  trans- 
act the  business  of  that  world  —  "a  spiritual  body." 

It  seems  probable  that  the  life  assumes  for  itself 
three  bodies,  each  of  them  necessary  in  the  three 
states  which  we  are  to  inhabit.  As  we  are  now,  here 
in  this  material  world,  we  have  a  body  of  the  same 
sort  of  matter  as  the  planet  on  which  we  live.  "  The 
Lord  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground." 

Shortly  we  shall  "  shuffle  off  this  mortal  coil." 
What  "body"  will  the  life  then  occupy?"  The 
spiritual  body,  S.  Paul  tell  us;  that  is,  a  body  of  the 
nature  of  that  spiritual  world,  where  it  will  await  the 
day  of  the  Resurrection.     Then  it  will  again  occupy 


SPIRIT.  91 

a  third  body,  adapted  to  the  altered  conditions  which 
have  brought  about  "  the  new  heavens  and  the  new- 
earth."  We  have  been  granted  some  insight  of  this 
mysterious  subject  in  seeing  the  changes  to  which  the 
body  of  the  Lord  was  subject.  When  He  died,  He  cer- 
tainly carried  with  Him  his  personality.  The  man  who 
was  crucified  on  his  right  hand  no  doubt  recognized 
Him  in  Paradise;  he  must  have  been  able  to  do  so, 
otherwise  the  Lord's  assurance,  "  This  day  thou  shalt 
be  with  Me  in  Paradise,"  would  have  been  little  else 
than  a  phrase  without  definite  meaning.  Our  Blessed 
Lord  doubtless  would  appear  the  same  man  to  him  in 
Paradise  as  he  saw  Him  on  Calvary.  Abraham  and 
Joshua  and  Daniel,  and  the  disciples,  and  'the  spirits' 
in  prison,  and  those  to  whom  He  showed  Himself  after 
his  resurrection,  and  S.  Stephen  and  S.  Paul  and 
S.  John,  after  his  glorification,  all  saw  the  same  man. 
His  personal  appearance  was  no  doubt  always  the 
same,  only  under  various  conditions  suitable  to  its 
environment,  it  was  a  'vile'  body  or  a  'glorified' 
body;  but  always  the  body  of  the  Son  of  God, 
through  which  the  Deity,  ever  unseen,  expressed 
Himself  to  the  beings  He  was  then  dwelling  with. 

The  qualities  of  the  resurrection  body  of  the  Lord 
ought  to  make  "  Scientists,"  and  the  ordinary  kind  of 
Scientists,  more  careful  what  assertions  they  use 
about  matter.  The  material  of  that  body  evidently 
possessed  other  qualities  than  those  which  describe 
the  matter  with  which  we  are  familiar.  It  was  not  a 
phantom  shape.  Thomas  doubtless  could  have  put 
his  finger  into  the  print  of  the  nails,  and  have  thrust 
his  hand  into  the  gaping  spear-wound  in  his  side.  It 
evidently   was    not    seen    by  reflected    light.     It  was 


92  "A  WAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

recognized  by  another  sort  of  light,  perhaps  that 
kind  of  light  which  illumines  the  other  world,  where 
they  need  not  the  sun  to  lighten  them;  moreover,  it 
could  only  be  seen  when  He  willed  it.  No  one,  sav- 
ing those  who  '  knew  '  Him,  appears  to  have  been  able 
to  see  Him.  It  was  only  to  his  own  that  He  ever 
*  shewed  Himself '  after  his  resurrection,  and  the 
power  of  recognition  had  something  to  do  with  the 
condition  of  their  own  faith,  for  when  He  met  all  his 
Galilaean  disciples  we  are  told  all  the  five  hundred  saw 
Him,  'but  some  doubted.'  His  body  still  retained 
some  qualities  in  common  with  the  material  of  which 
this  world  is  made;  his  voice  moved  the  air  and  made 
sound;  and  He  ate  before  them  'a  piece  of  a  broiled 
fish  and  an  honey  comb.' 

Mrs.  Eddy,  no  doubt  to  ward  off  the  very  natural 
suggestion  that  if  matter  is  nothing  but  an  illusion, 
it  were  folly  to  persist  in  the  delusion  that  food  is 
necessary  to  maintain  what  is  nothing,  declares,  "We 
need  more  goodness."  Now,  I  hope  she  would  not 
suggest  that  our  Blessed  Lord  was  not  actual 
'Righteousness'  itself;  and  yet  He  was  pleased  to  eat; 
so  that  it  is  not  a  question  of  'goodness'  whether  we 
can  do  without  food. 

Our  Lord's  body  could  pass  through  closed  doors 
and  walls;  it  could  appear  and  vanish  at  will;  and  at 
last,  in  no  chariot  of  fire,  but  by  its  own  capability,  it 
ascended  into  heaven.  It  evidently  was  either  not 
subservient  to  the  law  of  gravitation,  or  completely 
under  the  control  of  the  will.  This  gives  us  a  glimpse 
of  another  kind  of  matter,  a  kind  which  is  much 
nearer  the  condition  of  the  substance  of  the  spiritual 
world.     This,  we   believe,  shall   be   the    condition    of 


SPIRIT.  93 

our  bodies  when  we  shall  rise  from  our  graves,  for 
we  are  assured  'we  shall  be  like  Him.* 

There  are  certain  hints  in  this  direction  which 
science  has  of  late  whispered  which  are  little  less  than 
exciting.  We  have  long  known  that  the  whole  uni- 
verse is  filled  with  a  fluid  which  physicists  have 
agreed  to  call  ether.  It  is  the  oscillations  of  this 
ether  which  cause  in  us  the  sensation  of  light.  We 
can  measure  the  lengths  of  these  oscillations,  or 
waves;  we  know  the  exact  number  which  must  occur 
in  a  second  to  produce  a  certain  color.  It  would  oc- 
cupy the  whole  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States,  counting  for  twelve  hours  a  day,  nearly  six 
months  to  count  the  number  of  waves  of  ether  which 
must  impinge  upon  the  retina  of  the  eye  in  one  sec- 
ond to  give  the  sensation  of  violet  light  for  one  short 
moment.  Certain  mathematical  conditions  seem  to 
require  that,  to  allow  of  the  prodigious  velocity  with 
which  waves  of  light  traverse  the  ether,  this  ether 
shall  have  something  like  a  pressure  of  70,000  pounds 
on  each  square  inch  of  surface.  That  is  to  say,  the 
whole  universe  is  moving,  not  in  empty  space,  but  in 
a  transparent,  impalpable,  imponderable  something, 
ether,  more  dense  than  almost  any  solid  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  It  is  practically  certain  that 
the  particles  of  matter  are  in  violent  movement;  that 
that  which  appears  to  us  silent  and  motionless  is 
really  in  indescribable  commotion,  greatly  accelerated 
by  any  rise  of  temperature.  Lord  Kelvin,  the  great- 
est living  authority  on  such  subjects,  suggested  what 
is  known  as  ''  The  Vortex  Theory,"  that  matter  itself 
is  composed  of  vortices,  discs  or  rings,  of  this  ether, 
in  varying  conditions  of  movement  and  compression, 


94  "A  WAY  THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

and  there  are  mathematical  considerations  which  again 
support  this  theory.  Here,  then,  is  a  purely  physical 
conception  of  the  universe  that  is  startling.  This 
ether,  which  cannot  be  seen  or  handled,  and  which  is 
imponderable,  under  certain  conditions  becomes 
matter.  Matter  is  simply  a  term  for  ether  in  these 
particular  conditions.  Ether  is  the  only  substance. 
Substitute  the  word  Spirit  for  the  word  Ether  in  the 
foregoing,  and  the  words  of  Mrs.  Eddy  are  truly 
prophetic,   ''  Spirit  is  the  only  substance." 

Pondering  on  this  wonderful  subject,  the  Boston 
Sybil,  oppressed  with  her  mighty  mission,  on  page 
225  of  "the  little  book,"  wrote: 

The  individuality  of  spirit  is  unknown,  and  thus  a  knowledge 
of  it  is  left  either  to  human  conjecture  or  to  the  revelation  of 
•'  Divine  Science." 

We  still  wait  for  the  revelation;  and  in  the  mean- 
time we  deal  with  matter,  as  food,  clothing,  and  even 
dollar  bills,  as  Mrs.  Eddy  herself  does,  and  advises 
her  pupils,  the  Healers,  to  do  likewise  ! 


CHAPTER    IX. 


FORGIVENESS    OF    SIN. 


THE  grand  distinguishing  feature  of  the  Gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  doctrine  of  the  forgive- 
ness of  sin.  No  philosophy  which  ever  laid  serious 
claim  to  the  attention  of  men  has  ever  proposed  a 
way  by  which  the  consequences  of  wrong-doing  in 
the  past  might  be  averted,  and  the  present  inclina- 
tion to  do  wrong  again  taken  away.  No  religious 
teacher  on  earth  ever  boldly  proclaimed  to  his  fellow- 
men  that  by  following  his  advice,  they  might  be  rid 
at  once  of  the  future  consequences  and  present  power 
of  sin,  but  Jesus  Christ.  He,  and  He  alone  of  men, 
ventured  to  say,  "  Come  unto  Me  all  ye  that  are 
weary  and  heavy  laden  and  I  will  give  you  rest  "  — 
rest  from  '  the  burdens  of  the  way '  and  the  fear  of 
future  retribution.  That  this  is  no  vain  Gospel  is 
witnessed  to  by  thousands  in  every  generation. 
Jesus  Christ  has  never  been  without  witnesses  to  the 
wonderful  result  of  'coming  unto  Him.' 

His  people  'praise  God  in  the  fires;'  they  'sing 
songs  in  the  night; '  they  are  'filled  with  the  joy  and 
peace  of  the  Holy  Ghost;'  they  are  'in'  the  world 
but  not  '  of  the  world;  they  walk  on  air.  Read  the 
present  evidence  of  missionaries  all  over  the  world; 
read  the  story  of   John   Paton,  who  is  to-day  on  the 


96  "  A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

island  of  Aniwa,  in  the  New  Hebrides,  and  there  see 
how  a  whole  island  of  brutal  cannibals  became  in 
eight  years  transformed  into  a  peaceful,  loving,  joy- 
ous community,  by  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ;  or  go 
to  the  nearest  Salvation  Army  captain  and  ask  him 
to  show  you  a  man  or  a  woman  who  a  few  months 
ago  was  living  in  dirt  and  shame,  and  you  may  now 
see  *a  new  creature,'  with  a  changed  nature  and  a 
changed  face.  The  minister  of  every  church  ought 
to  be  able  to  point  you  out  here  and  there  one  who 
had  suddenly  '  touched  Christ,'  and  was  walking  '  in 
the  light  of  life,'  with  a  halo  of  very  glory  about 
them,  the  peace  and  joy  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  This  is 
why  miracles  are  no  longer  necessary. 

The  '  signs '  that  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  *  the  power 
of  God  unto  salvation  '  are  all  round  us.  To  change 
a  whole  nature  is  a  much  more  astonishing  work 
than  to  open  the  eyes  of  a  blind  man.  This  is  done 
every  day  by  the  simple,  straightforward  statement 
of  the  Gospel,  and  its  whole-hearted  acceptance.  It 
is  by  '  taking  God  at  his  word,'  and  '  believing  '  what 
He  says,  that  our  'sins  are  forgiven  by  the  sacrifice 
of  Jesus  Christ; '  that  we  '  yield  ourselves  unto  God;' 
then  the  life  of  Christ — that  is,  Christ  himself — 'comes 
into  us  and  abides  with  us.'  This  is  the  change 
which  comes  in  conversion,  and  the  astonishing  effect 
of  it  can  be  explained  in  no  other  way.  It  then  fol- 
lows, that  if  the  soul  becomes  vitalized  by  the  life  of 
Christ,  so  that  the  words  of  S.  Paul  are  experi- 
mentally realized:  'The  life  that  I  now  live  in  the 
flesh  I  live  by  Christ's  faith,  and  when  Christ,  who  is 
my  life,  shall  appear,  then  shall  I  also  appear  with 
Him  in  glory,'  Gal.  ii.,  20;  if  the  assertion  of  S.  John 


FORGIVENESS   OF  SIN.  97 

comes  true,  '  He  that  is  born  of  God  sinneth  not,  for 
his  seed  remaineth  in  him; '  then  it  must  be  that  the 
actual  'life'  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  in  the 
believer;  and  whatever  that  life  did,  or  will  do,  the 
person  that  has  it,  also  did,  and  will  do!  This  is  the 
way  we  are  '  planted  together  into  His  death,'  in  the 
past;  and  by  this  absolute  union  with  Christ,  we  even 
now  '■  sit  together  with  Him  in  heavenly  places.'  In 
fine,  we  are  veritable  members  of  his  body,  bone  of 
his  bone,  flesh  of  his  flesh;  one  with  Christ,  and 
Christ  with  us.  Astounding  as  it  may  seem,  never- 
theless it  is  an  inevitable  consequence  of  *  the  law  of 
this  life,'  that  whatever  Christ  is  or  has,  that,  and 
nothing  less,  is  ours;  "All  things  are  yours,  and  you 
are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is  God's." 

This  is  the  Gospel  Paul  preached;  now  see  what 
a  pitiful  travesty  of  this  magnificent  revelation  is 
"Christian  Science."  If  Mrs.  Eddy  and  company 
discarded  the  Bible,  and  honestly  declared  that  they 
shewed  unto  us  '  a  more  excellent  way,'  we  should 
at  least  know  by  what  to  estimate  their  offer.  But 
professing  to  'take  the  Bible  for  their  text-book,' 
and  characterizing  themselves  as  "  Christian  Scien- 
tists," they  mislead  unwary  souls  and  palm  off  upon 
them  '  another  Gospel,'  which  has  no  salvation  in  it, 
and  they  well  deserve  the  anathema  S.  Paul  pro- 
nounces against  them. 

The  Christian  reader  of  the  books  of  Mrs.  Eddy, 
and  Mrs.  Cramer,  and  Mr.  Henry  Wood,  and  the 
other  writers  of  the  cult,  soon  becomes  aware  that 
none  of  them  have  any  conception  of  the  real  nature 
of  sin.  It  is  never  more  than  casually  mentioned, 
and  is  always  spoken  of  as  a  flaw  of  the  disposition,  and 


98  •*  A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

never  as  the  deep-seated  leprosy  of  the  nature.  On 
page  345  Mrs.  Eddy  gives  us  her  opinion  on  this  vital 
question:  "When  mortals  once  admit  that  evil  con- 
fers no  pleasure,  they  turn  from  it;"  which  is  not  true- 
How  many  a  man  have  I  seen  'tied  and  bound  with 
the  chain  of  his  sin,'  with  bitter  tears  cursing  and 
loathing  the  strong  drink  which  he  detested  and  yet 
loved,  and  could  not  turn  from,  although  it  not  only 
gave  him  no  pleasure,  but  was  bringing  on  him  and 
his  swift  and  sure  desolation;  but  to  proceed: 

"Divine  Science"  adjusts  the  balance  as  Jesus  adjusted  it. 
Science  removes  the  penalty,  only  by  first  removing  the  sin, 
which  incurs  the  penalty.  This  is  the  sense  of  divine  pardon 
which  I  understand  to  mean  God's  method  of  destroying  sin. 

How  can  '  Science  '  remove  a  penalty  by  removing 
a  sin  which  already  has  been  committed  ?  If  "  Divine 
Science  "  can  turn  back  the  shadow  on  the  sun  dial, 
and  cause  yesterday  to  be  lived  over  again,  with  the 
experience  it  yielded,  then  we  can  understand  how  the 
sin  might  be  '  removed,'  by  preventing  it  ever  being 
committed.  It  is  mere  childishness,  if  not  something 
infinitely  worse,  to  propose  to  remit  sin,  which  the 
recording  angel  has  registered,  by  *  removing  it.' 
This  is  not  "  God's  method  of  destroying  sin." 

Sin  is  the  very  defection  of  our  nature.  This  na- 
ture descends  from  parent  to  child  by  means  of  blood, 
"which  is  the  life  thereof,"  an  assertion  constantly 
repeated  in  the  Old  Testament.  As  long  as  this  cur- 
rent of  life  descends,  so  long  must  the  beings  who 
live  by  it  be  a  sinful  race,  '  dead  unto  God  in  tres- 
passes and  sins,'  without  eternal  life.  But  into  the  line 
of  descent  came  the  Son  of  God.  Mrs.  Eddy  says, 
p.  334:     "Jesus  was  the  offspring  of  Mary's  self»-con- 


FORGIVENESS   OF   SIN.  99 

scious  communion  with  God,"  which  means  nothing. 
Jesus  Christ  was  "  conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  born 
of  the  Virgin  Mary."  The  words  of  the  angel  state  all 
that  the  human  mind  can  understand  of  the  mighty 
undertaking.  "The  Holy  Ghost  shall  come  upon 
thee,  and  the  power  of  the  Highest  shall  over- 
shadow thee,  therefore  that  Holy  thing  which  shall  be 
born  of  thee  (that  holy-begotten  thing),  shall  be 
called  the  Son  of  God."  So  it  was  that  his  nature 
was  the  Deity,  and  his  body  was  of  the  flesh  of 
man. 

In  his  body  ran  the  blood  of  Adam's  race.  On 
Calvary  He  parted  with  that  blood,  but  by  virtue  of  his 
Divine  nature  He  lived  through  the  catastrophe  of 
human  death,  and  came  back  to  life  still  with  a  body 
of  this  flesh,  but  without  that  blood  by  which  only 
could  be  the  continuance  of  the  sinful  nature  of 
fallen  man.  He  carefully  referred  to  this,  when  allay- 
ing the  fear  of  his  disciples  the  night  of  his  resurrec- 
tion: *A  spirit  hath  not  flesh  and  bones,  as  ye  see  I 
have.'  He  did  not  use  the  ordinary  phrase,  *  flesh 
and  blood;  '  there  was  no  blood  in  his  body.  The 
wounds  were  open,  but  bloodless.  This  is  the  reason 
of  that  well-known  assertion,  strikingly  made  by  the 
shedding  of  the  blood  of  the  Sacrificial  Victim,  and 
put  into  words  by  the  inspired  writer,  "  Without  the 
shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  remission  of  sin." 

This  is  the  Gospel  S.  Paul  preached:  "Jesus  Christ 
and  Him  crucified,"  and  this  is  not  the  Gospel  of  "  Di- 
vine Science."     Mrs.  Eddy  says,  p.  227: 

The  efficacy  of  the  Crucifixion  lies  in  the  practical  affection 
and  goodness  it  demonstrated  for  mankind.  The  material  blood 
of  Jesus  was  no  more  efficacious  to  cleanse  from  sin  when  it  was 


100  ''A  WAY  THAT  SEEMETH  RIGHT." 

shed  upon  the  accursed  tree,  than  it  was  when  it  was  flowing  in 
his  veins. 

Page  327: 

Final  deliverance  from  error  ....  is  not  reached  by 
pinning  one's  faith  to  another's  vicarious  effort.  Whosoever 
believeth  that  wrath  is  righteous  cannot  understand  God. 

Page  328: 

One  sacrifice,  however  great,  is  insufficient  to  pay  the  debt  of 
sin. 

Page  345: 

Another's  suffering  cannot  lessen  our  own  liability.  Did  the 
martyrdom  of  Savonarola  make  the  crimes  of  his  implacable 
enemies  less  criminal  ? 

No!  but  Savonarola  was  not  'the  Lamb  of  God 
which  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world.' 

Page  229: 

The  invisible  Christ  was  incorporeal,  whereas  Jesus  was  a 
corporeal  or  bodily  existence.  This  dual  personality  of  the  seen 
and  the  unseen,  the  Jesus  and  the  Christ,  continued  until  the 
Master's  ascension ;  and  then  the  human,  the  corporeal  concept,  or 
Jesus,  disappeared;  while  the  invisible,  the  spiritual  idea,  or  the 
Christ,  continued. 

Let  us  finally  turn  to  the  text-book  of  the  "  Chris- 
tian Scientists,"  the  Bible,  and  learn  what  it  says: 

*'  The  love  of  Christ  constraineth  us;  because  we 
thus  judge,  that  if  one  died  for  all,  then  were  all  dead; 
and  that  He  died  for  all,  that  they  which  live  should 
not  henceforth  live  unto  themselves,  but  unto  Him 
which  died  for  (in  the  place  of)  them,"  I.  Cor.  v.,  14. 

"  He  hath  made  Him  to  be  sin  for  us,  who  knew  no 
sin;  that  we  might  be  made  the  righteousness  of  God 
in  Him,"  L  Cor.  v.,  21. 

"God,  sending  his  own  Son,  in  the  likeness  of  sin- 


FORGIVENESS   OF   SIN.  101 

ful  flesh,  and  for  sin,  condemned  sin   in   the  flesh," 
Rom.  viii.,  3. 

"  Once,  in  the  end  of  the  world,  hath  He  appeared 
to  put  away  sin,  by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself. 
Christ  was  once  offered  to  bear  the   sins  of  many," 
Heb.  ix.,  26-28. 

"We  are  sanctified  through  the  offering  of  the  body 
of  Jesus  Christ  once  for  all.  ...  By  one  offering 
He  hath  perfected  forever  them  that  are  being  sancti- 
fied," Heb.  X.,  10-14. 

"Who  in  his  own  self  bare  our  sins  in  his  own 
body  on  the  tree,  that  we,  being  dead  to  sins,  should 
live  unto  righteousness;  by  whose  stripes  ye  were 
healed,"  I.  Pet.  ii.,  24. 

"  Christ  hath  suffered  for  us  in  the  flesh,"  I.  Pet. 
iv.,  I. 

"  The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ,  his  Son,  cleanseth  us 
from  all  sin,"  I.  Joh.  i.,  7. 

"He  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins;  and  not  for 
ours  only,  but  also  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world." 

"Surely  He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our 
sorrows  ;  and  we  did  esteem  Him  stricken,  smitten 
of  God,  and  afflicted.  But  He  was  wounded  for  our 
transgressions,  He  was  bruised  for  our  iniquities;  the 
chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  Him;  and  with 
his  stripes  we  are  healed.  .  .  .  The  Lord  hath 
laid  on  Him  the  iniquity  of  us  all.  It  pleased  the 
Lord  to  bruise  Him;  He  hath  put  Him  to  grief; 
when  Thou  shalt  make  his  soul  an  offering  for  sin,  He 
shall  see  his  seed,  He  shall  prolong  his  days,  and  the 
pleasure  of  the  Lord  shall  prosper  in  his  hand," 
Isaiah  liii.,  4,  6,  10. 

It  was  thus  that  'The  Son  of  Man,'  the  epitome  of 


102  "A  WAY  THAT  SEEMETH   RIGHT." 

humanity,  placed  himself  in  our  stead,  and  *  slew  the 
enmity'  which  separated  the  human  race  from  God 
and  Holiness,  by  suffering  death;  pouring  out  his 
blood  as  a  sacrifice  for  sin.  In  Him  we  all  died,  and 
*  He  that  is  dead  is  freed  (justified)  from  sin;'  hence, 
as  S.  Paul  writes,  in  Romans  vi.,  Sve  are  dead  to  sin; ' 
we  *  were  baptized  into  his  death; '  we, '  being  planted 
together,  have  grown  into  conformity  with  his  death;' 
our  old  man  (our  Adam  nature)  was  crucified  with 
Him  that  the  body  of  sin  might  be  rendered  pow- 
erless; *we  died  together  with  Christ;'  all  these  ex- 
pressions, taken  out  of  a  single  chapter,  are  only  to 
be  understood  in  the  light  of  the  fact,  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  the  second  Adam,  and  that  as  surely  as  we 
all  died  in  Adam,  so  we  all  participate  in  the  deeds 
of  the  life  of  the  second  Adam,  if  only  we  make  living 
union  with  Him  and  become  *  in  Christ.' 

Side  by  side  with  this  marvellous  expression  of  the 
Gospel  of  the  Grace  of  God,  the  salvation  of  sinners 
by  the  incarnation  and  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God, 
place  the  solitary  passage  to  which  the  index  of  the 
text-book  of  "Christian  Science"  refers  us.  Mrs. 
Eddy  knew  she  must  say  something  of  the  great  un- 
dertaking of  Jesus  Christ,  sin-bearing;  she  knew  she 
was  writing  for  people  who  *  called  themselves  Chris- 
tians,' and  they  must  have  some  explanation  of  a 
doctrine  they  pretended  to  hold,  but  of  whose  won- 
derful and  transforming  grace  they  had  had  no  per- 
sonal experience;  for  no  one  but  a  counterfeit  Chris- 
tian could  a  second  time  read  this  paragraph.  And 
I  appeal  to  those  who  are  not  wholly  reprobate, 
whose  eyes  the  God  of  this  world  hath  not  wholly 
blinded,  to  read  this  passage  on  p.  358,  and  say,  in 


FORGIVENESS   OF   SIN.  103 

the  light  of  the  verses  I  have  above  quoted  from  the 
Word  of  God,  which  alone  reveals  to  us  the  mystery 
of  the  Cross,  if  this  sentence,  from  the  pen  of  the 
high-priestess  of  their  profession,  is  not  senseless 
blasphemy! 

Jesus  bore  our  sins  in  his  own  body.  He  knew  the  mortal 
error  which  constitutes  the  material  body,  and  could  destroy 
that  error;  but  at  the  time  when  Jesus  felt  our  infirmities,  he  had 
not  conquered  all  the  beliefs  of  the  flesh,  or  his  sense  of  ma- 
terial life,  nor  had  he  risen  to  his  final  demonstration  of  spiritual 
power. 


CHAPTER   X. 


CONCLUSION. 


THERE  are  many  other  subjects  treated  of  in  this 
book  of  '  Science  and  Health,'  all  of  which  are 
as  far  from  the  truth  as  these  with  which  I  have 
dealt,  but  we  have  seen  sufficient  to  brand  this  gospel 
as  'another  gospel,*  and  not  in  any  sense  the  Gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Many  persons  have  tried  it,  and 
found  it  a  broken  cistern  which  held  no  water  of 
life.  Several  such  persons  I  know,  and  I  asked  one  of 
them  to  write  her  experience  of  "Christian  Science." 
She  is  a  lady  who  is  singularly  well  read;  who  pos- 
sesses one  of  the  most  capacious  memories  I  have 
ever  found;  who  for  long  gave  herself  to  all  that 
'mind  culture  *  which  is  so  sought  after  by  the  women 
of  this  generation.  God  led  her  out  of  darkness  into 
his  glorious  light  through  the  ministry  of  this  Church; 
so  that  she  is  a  competent  witness  to  the  compara- 
tive values  of  the  Gospel  of  "Christian  Science"  and 
the  Gospel  S.  Paul  preached. 

"  My  life  has  been  a  busy  one,  in  professional  work, 
which  required  me  to  spend  all  my  spare  time  in 
study.  Religions  and  philosophies  chiefly  engaged 
my  attention.  One  by  one  these  failed  to  be  con- 
clusive or  restful.  'The  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon 
the  face  of  the  waters/     So   now  in  the  soul  of  man, 


CONCLUSION.  105 

Light  must  reveal  the  chaos  and  create  the  desire  for 
order  (*as  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is  now.')  In  my 
chaotic  state  of  mind,  'Christian  Science'  appealed  to 
me  as  being  more  spiritual  than  most  religions.  It 
offered  much  enjoyment  to  a  person  of  trained  mind, 
quick  perceptions,  and  some  degree  of  culture.  But 
from  these  lessons  I  went  out  among  the  people  who 
were  burdened  with  daily  toil,  sins  and  sickness. 
They  could  not  read  the  books  I  lent  them.  They 
could  not  understand  the  lessons.  Yet  their  hearts 
were  hungry,  like  mine,  for  food.  And  when  I  asked 
my  teacher  how  the  scrub- woman  or  the  twelve-hours- 
a-day  fireman  could  find  this  perpetual  elevation  of 
soul  necessary  to  the  faith,  the  answer  was:  'They 
can't,  till  they  rise  out  of  that  life."  Then  there  were 
the  sick  and  the  sin-sick.  What  could  my  'Christian 
Science*  say  to  this  girl,  hopelessly  pleading  for 
peace  ?  '  Sin  has  no  existence— sickness  no  reality; ' 
could  I  say  that?  Not  in  the  very  face  of  her  misery! 
I  dared  not  say  that." 

"And  I  began  to  wonder,  Has  'Christian  Science' 
anything  like  that  wondrous  word,  'Neither  do  I 
condemn  thee;  go  in  peace  ? '  Everywhere  this  prob- 
lem met  me.  And  the  answer  of  the  teacher  was: 
'You  can  do  such  people  no  good.  They  are  not 
yet  ready  for  the  Truth.'  Because  of  this  growing 
un-christian  lack  of  sympathy  in  me,  I  began  to 
doubt  the  value  of  the  '  Christian  Science '  Faith." 

"  It  was  said  of  Jesus,  'the  common  people  heard 
Him  gladly.'  This  new  faith  might  still  be  the  truth 
of  Science^  but  I  began  to  omit  the  first  word  of  the 
name." 

"The  greater   reason    for   my   rejection  of   this  re- 


106  *'A  WAY   THAT  SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

ligion,  was  the  internal  evidence  of  the  spirit,  in  the 
torture  of  conscience.  'Christian  Science'  claimed 
to  be  based  upon  the  Bible  as  its  authority.  I  read 
the  first  great  commandment,  '  Thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,'  etc.  But  the 
teachers  objected  to  '  Lord  '  as  implying  personality. 
I  must  love  with  all  my  heart— Principle.  I  could 
think  of  the  dear  ones  long  dead,  as  at  rest  in  Nature, 
sooner  than  at  rest  in  Principle.  This  Principle, 
was  pure  Holiness  and  Truth.  Then  came  the  ques- 
tion :  Do  I  honestly  love,  with  all  my  heart— Holi- 
ness ?  And  Conscience,  not  wholly  dead,  of  course 
answered,  No!  What  then?  'Science'  answered: 
'You  must  deny  utterly  all  sin  in  yourself.  You 
cannot  sin.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  sin.  It  is  un- 
real.'    But  the  torture  of  conscience  was  very  real." 

"Then  I  read  again  in  my  Bible,  'This  is  life 
Eternal  to  know  Thee,  the  only  true  God,  and  Jesus 
Christ.'     I  stopped  there." 

'"Christian  Science'  had  told  me  of  God,  that  is, 
Principle.  It  had  told  me  of  Christ ;  that,  too,  is 
Principle.  But  of  Jesus,  'Science'  had  said:  'He 
was  a  living  person,  who  once  walked  and  talked  and 
loved  as  we  do.'  Here  was  what  the  hungry  heart 
wanted;  a  living  Friend  to  know  and  believe  in.  The 
'Scientist'  said,  'Jesus,  the  man.'  But  the  Bible 
does  not  separate  the  words;  it  says 'Jesus  Christ, 
whom  to  know  is  Life  Eternal.'  And  my  heart 
quickly  answered  to  this,  '  If  I  may  only  know  Him! ' 
And  I  began  to  read  the  Gospel  story  of  Jesus  Christ, 
and  there  was  then  something  to  say  to  tired,  sick 
people.  They  could  understand  those  stories  of  that 
life  in  Galilee." 


CONCLUSION.  107 

"  *  Science  '  proved  itself  a  beautiful  thing  for  sunny 
days;  but  it  failed  me  in  my  sorest  need.  And  so 
when  people  tell  me  they  are  happy  in  the  study  of 
'Christian  Science,'  my  heart  replies,  *  Yes!  you  are 
happy,  while  as  yet  you  see  no  end.'  But  it  has  an 
end.  And  He  has  said:  'This  (not  some  other  faith) 
is  Life  Eternal,  to  know  Him  and  Jesus  Christ.' " 

"The  difference  is  as  light  to  darkness;  He  led  me 
out  of  darkness  into  his  marvellous  light,  and  now  I 
know  the  reality  of  what  S.  Paul  tells  us,  that  our 
hearts  cannot  conceive  the  joy  God  has  in  store  for 
those  who  love  Him.  And  my  daily  prayer  is,  that  all 
who  are  seeking  peace,  through 'Christian  Science' 
teachings,  may  be  led  on  through  that  desert  to  the 
Waters  of  Life." 

The  truth  that  there  is  in  "Christian  Science" 
is  this  :  The  healings  it  affects  are  the  natural  con- 
sequences of  the  power  of  mind  over  matter,  thought 
and  will  over  body.  The  processes  it  adopts  happen 
to  be  peculiarly  favorable  to  direct  '  suggestion '  to 
the  affected  part.  The  sitting  quiet ;  the  banishing 
from  the  mind  all  extraneous  subjects  ;  shutting  the 
eyes  ;  the  soft  voice  of  the  healer  ;  the  repetition  of 
meaningless  sentences,  the  intelligence  is  not  stirred 
by  them,  there  is  nothing  which  can  cause  the  mind 
to  work  ;  it  is  a  sort  of  stroking  the  mind  until  it 
drowsily  purrs,  leaving  the  repeated  'suggestion'  po- 
tent ;  this  is  a  mode  of  mesmerizing.  All  this  con- 
tributes to  stimulate  that  nerval  force,  or  at  least  to 
allow  it  free  course,  which,  in  certain  classes  of  dis- 
ease, is  all  that  is  needful  for  a  return  to  health. 

We  hear  of  the  peace  "Christian  Scientists'  affirm 
they  acquire.     This  is  the  result  of  that  meditative 


108  "A   WAY   THAT   SEEMETH    RIGHT." 

quiet  which  is  the  great  resource  of  the  profession. 
The  Quakers  attained  it.  They  spoke  softly,  they 
walked  slowly,  they  sat  in  silence  long,  their  dress 
was  of  soft  fabrics  and  of  neutral  colors,  and  all  this 
contributed  to  allay  that  irritation  which  the  attrition 
of  every-day  life  is  so  apt  to  produce. 

Let  any  one  deliberately  retire  for  only  half  an 
hour,  daily,  and  sit  still,  communing  with  their  own 
hearts,  and  doing  nothing,  looking  at  nothing  ;  and 
it  is  astonishing  how  quickly  will  come  evenness  of 
disposition. 

And  in  fine,  though  I  say  it  with  a  sad  heart,  one 
main  reason  of  the  spread  of  this  delusion  is,  that  it 
gives  a  host  of  people  a  means  of  notoriety  and  even 
emolument,  who  without  it,  would  neither  attain 
the  one  nor  gain  the  other.  It  very  rarely  appeals 
either  to  the  really  educated  on  one  hand,  or  to  the 
uneducated  on  the  other  ;  but  its  natural  habitat  is 
in  that  vast  class  of  people  who  lie  between,  who  have 
little  cultivated  the  power  of  thought,  and  cannot 
keep  in  mental  view  two  ideas  at  a  time,  and  there- 
fore are  unable  to  draw  sound  deductions. 

It  is  a  very  curious  sight,  and  one  which  affords 
much  serious  reflection  to  the  sociologist,  to  see  such 
a  number  of  intelligent  people,  listening  constantly 
to  assertions  their  hourly  experience  contradicts ; 
being  assured  of  the  power  of  the  theory  to  banish 
sickness,  when  the  vast  majority  of  attempted  cures 
wholly  fail;  to  hear  them  ever  lauding  self- repression, 
but  never  doing  those  works  of  kindness  and  charity 
which  are  the  usual  offspring  of  unselfishness;  and 
to  see  them  gathering  to  listen  to  'Readings,'  which 
are  nonsensical.     To  the  sincere  Christian,  it  is  a  sad 


CONCLUSION.  109 

and  painful  sight  to  see  people  '  hewing  out  for  them- 
selves broken  cisterns,  which  can  contain  no  water,' 
when  at  their  very  doors  there  is  bursting  and  bub- 
bling that  well  of  *  the  water  of  life,'  which  the  God, 
who  loves  us  with  an  everlasting  love,  has  graciously 
opened  in  our  midst  for  'sin  and  for  uncleanness; ' 
wherefore,  then,  dost  thou  not  ask  of  Him  and  He 
will  give  thee  living  water,  that  thou  mayest  drink 
and  live  forever  ? 

This  almost  cursory  examination  of  a  deeply  in- 
teresting subject  has  brought  under  our  notice 
much  food  for  reflection.  Here  is  a  theory  which  has 
been  accepted  by  200,000  persons,  and  is  by  them 
being  propagated  with  an  ardour  which  is  not  a  little 
astonishing.  A  large  proportion  of  these  thousands 
have  undoubtedly  been  relieved  from  ailments  more 
or  less  irritating.  In  very  many  of  these  cases,  ample 
opportunity  was  given  to  the  ordinary  medical  prac- 
tice to  try  its  nostrums,  and  without  effect. 

We  believe  an  honest  perusal  of  the  foregoing  pages, 
especially  if  the  investigation  be  continued  in  the 
direction  indicated,  will  lead  to  the  conviction  that 
all  these  cures  have  been  of  disorders  due  to  some 
disorganization  of  the  nerval  system.  That  this  mas- 
terly power  of  nerve  force,  which  holds  so  high  a 
position  in  the  commonwealth  of  our  bodies,  is  emi- 
nently under  the  governance  of  the  will  That  this 
will  is  not  always  under  the  direction  of  conscious- 
ness, but  appears  to  be  also  the  executive  of  that  de- 
partment of  the  mind  which  may  be  called  'the  subject- 
ive mind.'  That  this  mind  can  receive  suggestions, 
and  put  them  into  effect  even  better  than  when  con- 
sciousness, and  reason,  its  trained  servitor,  direct  the 


110  "AWAY   THAT   SEEMETH   RIGHT/ 

will  to  require  the  obedience.  That  if  when  in  an  hyp- 
notic sleep,  this  'subjective  mind'  receives  a  sugges- 
tion, of  which  nothing  is  remembered  upon  awaken- 
ing, it  will  put  it  into  practice,  if  it  possibly  can, 
without  the  intervention  of  the  conscious  will. 

And  more  than  this,  this  power  can  be  invoked, 
when  the  subject  is  not  actually  put  to  sleep  mes- 
merically;  but  that  when  the  mind  is  partially  un- 
conscious, then  the  'subjective  mind,*  liberated,  as 
it  were,  from  the  necessity  of  being  in  attendance 
upon  the  active  intelligence,  follows  the  direction  of 
the  'suggestion'  impressed  upon  it,  and  goes  about 
to  set  to  rights  the  nerval  defection. 

It  would  be  strange,  indeed,  if  a  profession  ever 
upon  the  alert  to  discover  remedies  for  disorders, 
and  alleviations  for  distress,  should  refuse  to  learn 
from  the  lessons  that  "  Christian  Science  "  undoubt- 
edly teaches.  It  is  high  time  that,  in  the  medical 
curriculum,  room  should  be  made  for  the  study  of  the 
power  of  the  will  to  rectify  bodily  disorder.  It  has 
been  said  that  hypnotism  is  too  dread  a  power,  and 
as  yet  too  uncontrollable,  to  be  used  indiscriminately; 
but  how  many  poisons  are  in  daily  use  by  the  medi- 
cal practitioner,  and  in  his  educated  hand  are  of  the 
greatest  therapeutic  benefit  ?  Let  the  men  whose 
life-work  it  is  to  gather  for  us  every  healing  expe- 
rience, give  their  attention,  to  dissect  out  of  the  woof 
and  web  of  this  blurred  fabric  of  "  Christian  Science  " 
the  golden  thread  which  leads  to  the  secret  of  the 
cures  so  numerously  performed,  and  let  another 
department  be  definitely  added  to  therapeutics. 
Meanwhile,  let  the  law  require  that  no  "  Christian 
Science"  healer,   or  others  of  that  sort,  shall  under- 


CONCLUSION.  Ill 

take  to  treat  any  sick  person  who  has  not  consulted 
a  properly  authorized  practitioner,  to  ascertain  tlie 
nature  of  the  disease,  that  it  be  not  of  a  sort  likely 
to  terminate  fatall3\ 

For  let  death  occur,  and  whatever  the  remorse,  the 
traveller  will  not  return  from  that  bourne. 

This  authoritative  investigation  would  tend  to  refer 
the  curative  power  to  its  proper  source,  and  deliver 
many  well-meaning  people  from  accepting  teachings 
at  variance  with  those  truths  upon  which  they  have 
always  been  taught  to  place  dependence.  It  would, 
indeed,  seem  that  S.  Paul  had  in  his  mind  erratic 
theories  of  this  sort  when  he  wrote  to  Timothy:  "Now 
the  Spirit  speaketh  expressly  that  in  the  latter  times 
some  shall  depart  from  the  faith,  giving  heed  to 
seducing  spirits,  and  doctrines  of  devils," 

There  are  those  who  say,  that  it  is  of  little  moment 
what  we  believe,  if  only  we  are  in  earnest  and  live  de- 
cently. But  to  reach  any  destination  chiefly  depends 
upon  the  accuracy  of  our  knowledge  as  to  whether  the 
road  we  are  travelling  will  lead  us  to  the  place  whither 
we  would  go.  Energy,  determination  and  persever- 
ance on  the  wrong  road,  can  only  lead  us  further 
away  from  the  goal.  How  wrong  the  religious  ven- 
tures of  Mrs.  Eddy  are,  w^e  have  seen.  They  are  all 
the  more  dangerous  because  they  adopt  the  air  and 
language  of  Scripture.  They  profess  to  take  their 
whole  authority  from  the  Word  of  God,  and  seem  to 
readily  agree  with  the  dicta  of  revelation.  But,  as 
the  wisest  of  the  sons  of  men  well  said  :  "  There  is  a 
way  that  seemeth  right  unto  a  man  :  but  the  end 
thereof  are  the  ways  of  death,"  Proverbs  xvi.,  25. 


Date  Due 

^^^^' 

U 

f 

EP953.M32 

A  way  that  seemeth  right :  proverbs  xvl, 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


